Customer Reviews

Parenting: Love in Spoonfuls

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I admit that I am a former (mostly-reformed!) picky eater, and have always worried about how I would encourage my own children to be confident, adventurous, nutritional eaters. One flip through this (beautiful) book, and I am relieved to know that it can be done, simply.

The book is broken down by age/stage (4-6 months, 7-8 months, 9-11 months, and 12-18 months). Each recipe is laid out on a single page (sometimes with an accompanying picture on the opposite page) with simple icons for cooking time (including whether the time is mostly "hands off"), freezer-safe status, and recipe yield. As someone who regularly "makes extra" and freezes meals, I appreciate that every recipe includes a note as to how long these recipes can be refrigerated or frozen.

This book has sane, simple advice on feeding little ones, and this makes it so accessible. There are so fancy additives or ingredients (generally just things I buy anyway), so you don't have to hunt for anything to complete a recipe. Most of all, I didn't feel overwhelmed as I read it; well done by the editors of Parenting.

I especially enjoy that the recipes aren't limited to traditional kid fare, instead including salmon patties, bolognase, and french toast bites (all in the 9-11 month section), and fritatas, red beans & rice, and corn & red potato chowder (in the 12-18 month section).

I will be buying copies of this book to include with baby shower gifts!

Thankfully, my little angel pretty much eats any and everything we put in front of her. I'm always in the kitchen, and I don't cater towards young taste buds, so her adapting to the food I serve has been truly a miracle. Not all children are like that, and with baby number two on the way, I saw this as an opportunity to test the waters a bit with my cooking. So, when I saw that a cookbook directed at foods for your little one was offered on this month's Vine list, I jumped right on it.

You never know, this new baby may hate everything I know and love (food-wise).

The first thing I noticed about this book is how pretty it is. I don't usually indulge in a lot of cookbooks. I'm more of a freelance cooker (ha) in that I don't like to follow a recipe. So, I own a few cookbooks, more for inspiration than anything else, and I only by them if they have pictures (which tend to inspire me more than the recipe itself). This book has lots of them, and they are all appetizing, colorful and vibrant. They make you want to cook their food, and that is VERY important.

As they always say, you eat with your eyes first.

I loved the thoughtful forward and all the little tidbits of info and suggestions littered throughout the book. It's a fun and playful book, embodying the spirit of its inspiration; children.

The book is easy to read and easy to follow. This isn't one of those recipe books that is going to sit on the shelf and collect dust due to the fact that you can't figure something out or can never find ingredients. A lot of these recipes could be made from the stuff sitting in your pantry.

Oh yeah, and the food is pretty delicious.

I've only tested out a few of these, but we all seem to really enjoy what's here. Granted, I don't ever follow a recipe exact, so I add a little or take away where I see fit, but I don't think that any recipe is meant to be followed to the T (unless you're baking). My daughter is a huge fan of the Sweet Potato Fries and the Salmon Patties. I also wanted to mention that, not only are the ingredients pretty accessible, but the recipes are easy to follow and that leads to another experience all together. My daughter hasn't helped out as of yet (we've only had this book a weekend) but she is nearly three and getting to that age where helping out in the kitchen would be fun for her, so she is really excited to cook for the new baby. With recipes like these, I know she'll get along well in the kitchen.

She calls this `her' cookbook!

Anyways, I totally recommend this buy. It's a fun read and it's a visually appealing book, and most importantly the food is pretty tasty! If you are finding it difficult to get your little one to eat something healthy, this may just be the answer to your prayers.

I love the pictures and format of this cookbook. It is easy to navigate and has lots of good "side" info (e.g., the mercury levels in various types of fish or how to introduce herbs, etc.). Most importantly, there are also really creative recipes that pair ingredients I probably would have never combined on my own (e.g., Creamy Pear with Spinach). My baby is only just about to turn 4 months old, so I have not really explored the later recipes, but I like the purees I have tested so far. Highly recommended!

I got this book at about the same time as Super Baby Food, when my baby was just ready to start eating his first solids. The Super baby food book has so much more information, and much more recipes, then Love in Spoonfuls has. I didn't like the Super Baby food's attitude towards eating meats, and its advice on keeping baby germ-free seems to be a little bit too much.
Love in Spoonfuls is printed on nice paper, has big pictures of prepared food, the recipes are easily organized by age. It is the book for busy parent who just cannot indulge in reading fine print for hours to find out how to puree green beans.
There are some simple, sometimes quite unexpected combinations for baby to try and to add variety to the baby's diet. The recipes seem very much in line of what our pediatrician tells us about nutrition. The book is not for gourmet chefs, but for regular parents who want to venture from jarred baby food, but still have time to enjoy their baby.

I love this book. I am NOT a cook. I am a first time mom of an 8 month old son who doesn't eat so great herself (hardly touched a vegetable before adulthood) and who is determined that my son will eat better than I did as a child (and hopefully as an adult as well!) There are a lot of criticisms of baby food cookbooks that only a moron needs a recipe book to tell them to shred up some carrots and steam them. Well, for someone who has never used a vegetable steamer before, it's not quite so obvious! This book starts with the basics, the very basics, and assumes you basically know nothing about cooking nutritious food which was very true for me. With this book, I have bought and cooked nutritious foods for my son that I never knew how to cook for myself. I had never in my life bought raspberries, prunes, asparagus, blueberries, cherries, sweet potatoes, green beans, white beans, zucchini, etc--now I buy them all the time and my son gobbles them up! This book combined with Cooking Light's First Foods have made me a true baby chef. I make about 90% of my son's food. FYI--I am a more than full time working mom (I am a physician in residency working upwards of 70 hours a week) and still find time to do this. These recipes, at least the 4-8 month and 8-12 month section, are very doable. They seem to get a bit more complex after this, so we'll see how things go!

My baby had just started eating table foods but I still didn't feel quite comfortable giving her exactly what we were eating. She ate a lot of Gerber raviolis while mom tried to figure out what to start giving her. This book just really helped me out by giving me ideas. The recipes are simple and some of the recipes used canned foods and frozen veggies, things that can be readily available. Most of the recipes only take 10-25 minutes to make. I like that I can usually just make whats good for baby in bulk for the rest of the family too. For someone who really was clueless and didn't have much time this book has been really helpful.

This cookbook definitely has more interesting offerings than the usual bland rice cereal or mashed banana; it includes things like turnip puree (!), cherry puree, and avocado for the youngest group, and other more unusual suggestions for older kids, like asparagus and applesauce puree and zucchini-white bean puree for 7-9 month olds; pear with spinach, roasted red pepper dip, and green beans and tofu for 9-11 month olds; minestrone, baked fish with mango, and barley with butternut squash for 12-18 month olds. This more unusual slate of offerings is sure to inspire parents of young children, especially those bold enough to feed their baby cherry puree!

I can only guess that the editors of Parenting magazine are trying to walk a fine line between suggesting creative cooking for young kids and the presumption that most people would rather open a package to feed their baby. I was surprised by how often semi-prepared foods, particularly frozen produce, were called for. Roasted red peppers in a jar, canned beans,... okay. I could overlook the canned salmon, too. But many of the fruits and vegetables suggested are called for in various states of processing (frozen peach slices (p 84), frozen minced shallot (p 101), and "precut sweet potato spears" (p 120)). At least some of these items (such as sweet potatoes) are much less expensive when purchased as a whole item and prepared at home, with minimal effort.

The book is visually appealing, with many photos (although not one for every dish) and helpful information and suggestions. All in all, a nice offering for parents and others looking for nutritious and appealing dishes for young children, especially those who want creative but fairly uncomplicated recipes using frozen foods.

As a mother of two, the health and nutrition of my children has become a major focus of my life. I also look to expose my children to a wide variety of foods, so that they can experience many different tastes and textures, so I seized this book with a great deal of enthusiasm.

Along with recipes, this book has a lot of tips and tricks, such as suggestions for storing baby food. I thought these were nicely done. I appreciated the inclusion of the "dirty dozen" list, which specifies which fruits and vegetables have the highest pesticide load. However, like many commentaries on organic foods, I thought this book missed the point when it focused solely on the argument about whether or not organic foods contain more vitamins and minerals. For many parents (myself included), this is entirely beside the point. My objective is to keep the chemicals out, period.

That criticism aside, the book is nicely set up. It begins with a section of recipes for 4-6 month olds that contains multiple recipes for fruit and vegetable purees. Though jarred baby food in general is very healthy and goes through stringent screening, some of the recent contamination scares may leave parents feeling more comfortable with the idea of controlling what goes into the food and how it is prepared. This book is a nice primer.

From that base, the book offers some new suggestions for flavors every couple of months. I think this is a great idea, particularly since jarred baby food can be somewhat limiting in terms of what it has to offer. A particular favorite for us came in the 9-11 month section, with a recipe for hummus. Though my daughter loved hummus when she was little, I'd never tried preparing it, and both my son and I were quite happy with the results!

Beyond the 9-11 month stage, I'm not sure how much utility the book really has. There are still some nice recipes in it, like the blueberry-oatmeal mini pancakes. However, at this stage, my husband and I simply started feeding our son whatever it was the rest of the family was eating. We simply made sure to cut it into small pieces so that our son could manage it. There's no reason not to use the recipes in this book for the 12-18 month set, but I personally only used them when I wanted to make that meal for the whole family. I didn't see much point in serving up two separate meals; one for my one-year-old and one for the rest of the family.

Still, this is a nice book and I was particularly pleased with the suggestions for younger babies. It would make a nice gift for any new parent who is interested in preparing their own baby food.

a great book for new moms who wants to feed his baby homemade food but totally have no clue on the what and how. i got this book a bit late (my baby's almost 10mo now) and while he's still toothless he been an eager eater. the recipes on this book is easy to prepare and quite yummy too. i've made the salmon patties (they're so good i made 2 batches and ate half of them myself), french toast, and planning to make the meatballs and veggie pancakes today. it's quite surprising how delicious the food came out considering they don't use sugar/salt in them.

this book also tells you how to freeze the prepared food. too bad the delicious looking ones are usually not freezer friendly, but seeing how fast my baby gobbled it, i might not have leftovers to freeze.

I've struggled with getting more veggies into my picky toddler's diet (and mine, quite frankly). While I haven't used many of the recipes from Love in Spoonfuls exactly as written, there are some truly creative and brilliant ideas for getting more vegetables eaten. Using both food prep (adding veggies almost as seasoning in places) and presentation, this book clearly understands youngsters and caters smartly to them. Highly recommended!