Barbara Schieving - The Instant Pot Toddler Food Cookbook: Wholesome Recipes That Cook Up Fast--in Any Brand of Electric Pressure Cooker

Your childs food habits start early and are a unique combination of their innate preferences and their personal experiences with food. Just as you teach your toddler to drink from a cup and eat with utensils, you need to teach them to love the healthy foods your family eats. The recipes in this book are designed to do exactly that!

Cook family meals. We dont believe parents need to cook separate meals for toddlers and adultsits enough work to get one meal on the table! Yet, it can be particularly disheartening to make a big batch of food, only to have your toddler turn up their noseor worse, throw it on the floor! Therefore, the recipes in this book are designed to make a single meal for a smaller families of three or four, since larger families will likely have grown beyond making meals specifically for their toddlers tastes.

Customize for toddlers. Weve taken our familys favorite recipes and toned down the seasonings and sugar content to introduce your toddler to grown-up food without overwhelming their sensitive palates. (Think of these recipes as training wheels for family eating.) We have also included several points where you can remove a portion specifically for your toddler before finishing the recipe, allowing you to enjoy a grown-up meal and still serve certain foods on the side to help your toddler grow accustomed to the meal.

Make it your way. If you know your toddler hates a certain ingredient, switch it out! Just be sure that when you make a substitution, youre trading for another ingredient thats similar in size, texture, and cooking needs. (For instance, subbing frozen corn for frozen peas would work great, while subbing peas for fresh asparagus or large broccoli florets wouldnt work well.)

The same principles apply for thickeners (use twice as much flour as cornstarch), grains (white rice cooks much faster than brown rice), and meats (ground chicken and ground beef have similar cooking needs, while diced chicken cooks much faster than diced beef or whole chicken breasts). Similarly, if you prefer a sauce or soup thicker or thinner than the one specified, add or reduce the liquids added after pressure cooking.

Spice it up. Many of these recipes give you a range of sugar and spices you can add, allowing you to choose how much of these ingredients you want. These recipes try to strike a good balance between being intentionally mild for your toddlers but not so bland that the parents wont enjoy eating with their toddler. If a dish is too mild for your tastes, add a little extra seasoning to your portion. Or, on the other hand, if the spices are still too much for your toddler, walk things back even further.

Keep it simple. Mealtimes not only test toddlers adaptability to new textures and flavors, but they also test toddlers fine motor skills. Weve tried to keep these recipes easy for toddlers to eat, including extra-thick breakfasts, soups, and sauces that stick to the spoon or bread when dippedas necessary, customize the consistency to your familys tastes. In addition, many lunches and dinners go into the pressure cooker bite-sized, minimizing the amount of dicing you have to do once the food is cooked.

A Note about Allergies

For many years, pediatricians recommended delaying introduction of potential allergens like peanuts, eggs, and dairy. However, recent research indicates that early introduction of these foods may actually lessen your childs risk of allergies. Since the science isnt settled in this area, we recommend following your pediatricians advice regarding food introduction.

Out of caution, weve left peanuts out of the cookbook and tree nuts are optional or easily replaced; however, many of our recipes call for eggs and dairy. Omit or substitute any ingredients in this cookbook that your pediatrician has recommended avoiding due to your childs previous reactions to foods or family history of allergens.

Keep in mind that were just a mother-daughter team who have done our best to get healthy foods in our toddlers without stressing too much! Youll absolutely want to defer to your pediatrician for specific advice regarding your toddler. However, after all these years feeding kids, we do have a few tricks up our sleeves, supported by recent guidelines from pediatricians and parenting experts.