Homemade Baby Formula

This is a chicken broth based formula. There are many kind of homemade formulas, I tryed many of of them. The most suitable for my little girl, is that one without dairy products.

Here we have (from left ot right and up to down):

- Vitamin D-3 (Now Food brand) (400 mg)
- Vitamin C from Acerola powder (one teaspoon)
- Chicken broth (200 ml)
- Lecithine powder (Now Food brand) (one teaspoon)
- Extra vergin olive oil (one teaspoon)
- DHA (one capsule)
- Coconut oil (one teaspoon)
- Probiotics (one tablespoon)

Quinoa Breakfast

Cereals, even the gluten free ones, like quinoa, even soaked and boiled before, should not occur in the baby's meals, before age of two ears. If you are not so conservative, i suggest you to introduce cereals, with gluten or not, after the age of one year. The amylase enzyme needed for starch digestion is produced by the digestive system after this age.

My little sweetie girl has now almost 3 years, so she can eat safely this kind of food. A way of serving her quinoa breakfast is with a top of row organic honey and pieces of well ripe banana. I ususaly have quinoa in refrigerator, soaked and boiled before as I've told you here.      

Coconut Cream Recipe

Due to Victor's dairy intolerance, and mine also, I use a lot of coconut (milk, flakes or cream) to substitute the dairy products. These can replace the taste, flavor and texture of cow's milk, cream or whipped cream made by real milk. If we are talking about gluten free dishes, coconut is also helpful, because can replace very well the consistency of dough.  

So, this is the reason I have all the time in my kitchen blended coconut, made like a cream, from coconut pulp and water. To get this coconut cream, first you have to open the coconut. Here you have how you can do this at home.

After you have cracked the coconut, remove all the pulp from the shell, helping by a knife like in the picture above. I suggest you to wash the pieces of coconut pulp before putting them in the blender, because they can have tiny pieces of coconut shell. Then you just put the coconut in a blender with water (for one coconut add 2 glasses of water) and blended it until you get a smooth cream.

I keep the coconut cream in glass jars and freeze it immediately after I prepare it. You can keep it in the fridge, but no more that a few days, because otherwise it will get rotten.

So, this coconut cream can replace sour cream, whipped cream or Mascarpone cheese in many recipes. Or you can eat it just like this. It's a perfect meal for a baby, starting with age of 6 months. For babies I suggest you give it to them, only fresh, not freezed.  

Salmon Pate Recipe

This is a healthy recipe for breakfast or just as a snack between big meals. 

The ingredients are:

350 grams salmon boiled in water

250 grams ghee butter (if you are not dairy free, you can use raw butter from pasture raised caws)

2 cloves of garlic

1 teaspoon salt (I use Himalayan one, or from Romanian saline; anyway... I suggest you to buy a salt unrefined and unprocessed with iodine)

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

1 tablespoon juice of lemon (I forgot to put it in this recipe because I got an important call from someone special :)

Mix all the ingredients with a blender, but do this while the salmon is still hot.

And put the pate in a glass recipient to store it in the fridge. Piece of cake!

Have a lovely evening!

Sweet Potato Muffins

First of all, I want to mention to you that this muffin recipe is suitable for babies starting with one year old. My point of view regarding cereals, formed after the opinion of Weston Price, the father of nutrition, is that this food category (even gluten free ones, even soaked ones) should not be introduced into the diet of a child, until after he reach the age of one year.

For bigger children, these muffins are perfect like a healthy snack for school lunch. So, the ingredients for this easy and healthy muffins recipe are below:

1 cup gluten free all purpose flour

1 cup walnuts (soaked before 4 hours)

1 medium sweet potato (or 300 grams pumpkin)

4 organic eggs
coconut oil 50 grams

As you can see in the picture below, the gluten free flour used by me is a self-raising one, so I don't need any baking powder. 

First step is to cut the sweet potato in half and place it in an oven at 160 degrees Celsius or lower, to bake until a folk easily enter in it. When is ready, place it somewhere in the kitchen to cool. Later, when is a little cooled, take away the peel and smash it with a folk.

Until the potato is baked and cooled, grind the soaked walnuts in a food processor and mix them with the other ingredients: gluten free flour, eggs and coconut oil. 

About the coconut oil... if you usually keep it in fridge, you have two options to melt it: you take it out the fridge one hour before prepare the recipe, or you put it (as I did) in a small glass bowl in the oven near the potato, for a few minutes. 

No matter how you choose to melt the coconut oil :) finally mix all the ingredients in a glass bowl and add in the mashed sweet potato. Your mixture should look like this:

Then put the quantity of 2 teaspoons in each muffin paper cups ( from Ikea of course) and place them in a tray like mine, or in the special muffin pan if you have one. I have one, but today when I wanted to used it, I realized that I forgot it at my mother last week. 

Bake the muffins for about 20 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius. This is how the muffins look in the end!

Baby Custard

This is a baby recipe starting from 6 months old age.

The ingredients are:

1 cup raw milk (or coconut milk for those who want to avoid milk)
1 cup raw cream
6 egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon vanilla (optional)
a pinch of stevia powder (or a few drops if you have liquid stevia) (optional)

Mix all the ingredients in a blender, pour into buttered ramekin dishes. place the ramekin dishes in another dish (an enamel tray or a Pyrex dish) filled with water half-way. This is the bain-marie cooking method.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees and cook the custard for about one hour, until it looks like my picture.

Lamb Liver Pate

Pate is ideal for breakfast, with bread (gluten free bread or wheat bread) or just with fresh vegetables for those who avoid all types of cereals. But, in all cases, in the morning you should already have the pate in the fridge, ready to be eat, prepared at least a day before. 

It sounds complicated, I know, but believe me it's not. Maybe the most complicated part of this recipe, is to get a pasture raised liver lamb, as I did from a shepherd I know for many years. In Bucharest where I'm living, I could also get it from Muslim butchers, because it's the only place in a big city where you can find for sure pasture raised lamb. 

As I guess you already know if you are passionate about healthy nutrition, the organs have a much more nutritional value comparing with meat. This is the issue why we are trying to do everything to feed the children with organs. As many adults, the picky eaters will never and ever eat a piece of a liver no matter what animal is from, if you give them the liver such as... so the best solution is to make it pate, which they will never guess there is liver in. 

So, the ingredients are in the picture below (and don't be strict regarding the quantities, important is to have enough vegetables because it will hide the liver taste): 

300 grams pasture raised lamb liver (or chicken, duck, goose liver)

250 grams raw carrots

a piece of celery

one small onion

5 garlic gloves

250 grams pasture raised caw butter (I usually put ghee butter, because is dairy free, but today I hadn't)

one teaspoon curcumin (the powder also  known like curry)

In a cast iron cookware (I used an Ikea pan), put a table spoon of pork lard and half glass of water. 

Cut the vegetables and put all together in the pan and put a lid on it.

If it's necessary add water during cooking, because the vegetables should get well done, but not burn. When the carrot is well done, add the lamb liver cut small pieces.

Finally, in the end it should look like in the picture below. 

Put it in a bowl and mix it with a blender...

until it looks like this! :)  It should be soft and creamy, otherwise the picky eaters will make a wry face at you :) if they feel the smallest piece of something in it...

Keep it in the fridge in a glass recipient, not to allow the xenoestrogens from plastic to get in your very fancy schmancy pate ! :)