First Meals

First Meals – Fast, Healthy, and Fun Foods for Infants and Toddlers
Written by Anabel Karmel
Published at DK Canada

About the book

Give children the best start to life with the hundreds of recipes in this bestselling easy-to-use cookbook from children's food guru Annabel Karmel. From flavourful first purées and easy-to-make family meals to finger-licking picnic and party noshes, First Meals features over 200 enticing recipes for babies and toddlers.

Helpful tips from Annabel as well as nutritional information and tips on how to handle food allergies and fussy eaters complete this delicious book. Crammed with delicious recipes, practical advice and time – saving tips, this is an essential cookbook for all families with young children.

• Recipes tried and tested by a panel of babies of toddlers
• Nutritional breakdowns of recipes included

My Thoughts

When I had kids, I thought I would feed them the processed food found in stores.  After all, I was raised on such items and I turned out fine.  But after a couple of months when my oldest son joined our family, I discovered the possibility of making his purée food at home.  We got a book titled First Meals and proceeded to making out-of-the-ordinary purée for him (and eventually his siblings) with the help of our blender.   My husband was so amazed with the quality of the food made with this book that  he quickly told me to keep the book so that I can feed him good things if he ever has to eat only purée food.   Needless to say that the book is safely tucked in a box in our basement for the future – hopefully more for our grandkids than for my husband…

The new edition of the book contains over 200 tasty and healthy recipes that have been tested on babies, toddlers and young children.    These recipes will help you to assure that your child is getting all the benefits of a balanced diet from the younger stages of his/her life.     The book is packed with mouth-watering recipes that will develop the taste buds of your little one as he/she grows up.  From the creamy vegetable purée to the  sticky mango chicken you will find a huge variety of ideas that will allow you to introduce new flavors and textures in the mouth of your kids.   Since we cracked open our older edition of the book, I find new recipes that I want to try out – like that sticky mango chicken found in the 3 to 7 years old section which sounds delicious if you ask me… 

Let’s explore the table of contents together so you can see what the book covers;

• Early Nutrition
• Healthy Eating
• Food Allergies
• Kitchen Basics
• Weaning your Baby:  Starting solids, exploring tastes, first tastes recipes, new tastes and textures recipes
• 9 to 12 months: growing appetites, a varied menu recipes
• 12 to 18 months: changing needs, food for the senses recipes
• 18 months to 2 years: the active toddler, fast food for toddlers recipes, the picky eater recipes
• 2 to 3 years: early childhood, fun foods recipes
• 3 to 7 years old: preschool and beyond, healthy snacks recipes, family meals recipes
• Menu planner

Here’s my four kids in the age of purée food – they all tasted recipes found in the First Meals book we had back then (born in 2001, 2004, 2005, and 2007).

Now my kids are all grown up – respectively ages almost 13, 10, 8, and 6 – and though they are far from having kids of their own, I cherish my older version of this book (and the new one obviously) so that my grandkids have healthy options when they grow up.   Already the two oldest wants a copy of the book for their own kids (*grin)  and I told them they could share.  I also truly believe that my kids are not fussy about food and willing to try a variety of new flavors because of us being proactive in presenting numerous recipes from the older version of First Meals when they were young.

The author has also published other titles like More First Meals, Baby’s First Year, Mom and Me Cookbook and The Toddler Cookbook.   First Meals is a great idea for baby showers or new parents.  

First Meals is available at your favourite bookstore, even amazon.ca and amazon.com.

DK Canada is offering numerous books that are baby related in their April Baby Boutique.  Check them all out to see which one you think would be beneficial to you or someone in your family.

Disclaimer: Thanks to DK Canada for sending me the above mentioned title for review purposes. I was not monetarily compensated for this review. Please note that the review was not influenced by the Sponsor in any way. All opinions expressed here are only my own.