Mommy Made and Daddy Too: Home Cooking for a Healthy Baby & Toddler (Paperback)

~ (Author), David Kimmel (Author), Suzanne Goldenson (Author) "Feeding our children is where our parenting begins..." (more)
Key Phrases: better nutrient retention, fresh baby food, baby servings, Nutritional Profile, Primary Purees, Golden Delicious (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The ultimate parents' guide to baby and child nutrition, featuring delicious, optimally healthy baby and toddler foods, from the family who founded the Mommy Made line of premium baby food. Also tackles problem areas like food allergies and difficult eaters.

From the Inside Flap

Everyone loves a home-cooked meal--even babies and toddlers!  Experts agree that homemade baby food is the healthiest way to feed young children. By making their own baby food, parents can drastically reduce the sugar, salt, artificial colors, fillers, additives, and preservatives in their child's diet. And now making baby food from scratch has never been easier--with this practical, user-friendly cookbook by Martha and David Kimmel, founders of the phenomenally successful Mommy Made* line of baby and toddler food.

Updated for a special 10th anniversary edition, Mommy Made* is filled with 140 easy-to-make recipes that are perfect for introducing your baby to wholesome solid foods. These delicious, kid-tested dishes--which include finger foods, shakes and smoothies, snacks on the go, spoonable treats, and a variety of table dishes--were created with your baby's special nutritional needs in mind, and will help your child establish healthful eating habits that will last a lifetime.

Mommy Made* also includes:

Nutrition advice from birth to three years--incorporating guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics

A blueprint for when and how to get your baby started on solid food

Answers to parents' most frequently asked questions:  from milk and protein needs to determining portion size, preventing "hunger strikes," and detecting food allergies

Tips on pureeing, straining, and mashing, as well as storage, thawing and reheating, and using the microwave

A handy nutrition glossary, food pyramid, and list of helpful websites

And much more! --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 308 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (May 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553348663
• ISBN-13: 978-0553348668
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (76 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,430,621 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Better book than "Super Baby Food", December 18, 2002

By	Little Greek - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mommy Made and Daddy Too! (Revised): Home Cooking for a Healthy Baby & Toddler (Paperback)

"Super Baby Food" has it's strong points but the recipes are a bit to froo-froo for my taste and they seem to go to the vegetarian extreme. "Mommy Made" however, contains great basic recipes that anyone with a steamer and blender can make. The author is very informative about introducing new foods to your baby and provides a timeline as to when you should introduce them. The receipes are not grouped by age but by food (ie fruits, vegetables, meats, etc) however, if you look carefully at the sidebar notes that the author makes, you will notice that she puts them in order within each category. For instance, applesauce is the first food listed and is therefore one of your baby's first foods. Make sure to read the sidebars as you go so that you can tell what foods are appropriate to introduce at what age. I do agree with another reviewer that there could be more information on how to freeze and store the prepared food but that is a minor detail and just about anyone can figure it out on their own. This is a great book that you can use over and over. I highly suggest it!

85 of 90 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Book for new parents/beginner cooks, November 15, 2002

By	"Dory" (Sunny CA.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mommy Made and Daddy Too! (Revised): Home Cooking for a Healthy Baby & Toddler (Paperback)

I was anticipating a book filled with helpful hints on how to manage cooking and storing baby food. But if you know how to steam fruits and vegtables, you know about half of what the book covers. There is one paragraph on how to store frozen food. I was more interested in, how to store bananas for example, whole, mashed, pureed?

Alot of basic info given on when to wean from breast or bottle (this does not pertain to cooking in my opinion). So save some money and just steam your foods and puree them for baby. When your toddler gets ready for finger foods, use your common sense and give them what you eat and expose them to lots of different tastes in a systematic way. It does mention the "no-no" foods like grapes, sugar, salt, peanuts and honey, but again I received most of this info from their doctor anyway.

As a side note, the outdated cover and lack of photos does not entice me in any way to completely read this book. Recipes would have been more organized had they been listed in order like 4-6 months, 6-9 months...instead they are listed in categories.

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Takes the fear out of making your own baby food, September 30, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Mommy Made and Daddy Too! (Revised): Home Cooking for a Healthy Baby & Toddler (Paperback)

I bought this book with Ruth Yaron's Super Baby Food book several months ago, and while the Yaron book is in mint condition from lack of use, this one is dog-eared and stained with pureed squash, peas, and apples.

This book has a wonderful approach and gives great guidelines for preparing your own baby food. It's really very easy to do and doesn't take much time at all. I love knowing what my baby is eating and not being afraid to try to the food I'm giving him. We still have the jars of food for when we go out, but primarily he gets fresh fruits and veggies that I steamed & pureed myself.

My husband was a little skeptical of my making our own baby food at first, but now he is a big fan. It is incredibly easy for him to take a couple of cubes out of the freezer, defrost & feed to our son (I make a batch and freeze them in ice cube trays, then put them in labeled freezer bags). Plus, unlike the jarred food, you don't have to worry about opening a jar & using it within 2 or 3 days; you can just defrost a cube at a time.

It's also very cost-efficient to make your own baby food because whereas a jar of carrots may cost $$$ (if you get the organic kind), you can make the equivalent of 7 or 8 jars for less than $$$.

One big difference we noticed was in the peas -- I bought an emergency jar of organic peas and it was a slimy olive green color (my friend's baby wouldn't touch the stuff). I then made my own from a bag of frozen organic peas and they came out bright green -- like they should be. And they're a thicker consistency that my son appreciates.

Another difference we noted was in the squash- the jarred kind smells faintly of cinnamon. Supposedly it's just squash & water, but when I made my own it didn't smell that way. I don't 100% trust what's in the jarred foods. We tried one of the vegetable blends of jarred food and my son got a rash. So far he hasn't had any reaction to the fresh foods, though.

I can't recommend this book enough! My son is 8 months old and I typically use this book 2 or 3 times a week -- even just to look for what new foods to give him. There are handy sidebars that list when you can start your baby on the food (e.g., primary puree, 7 months, 10 months, etc.) and things you can do later to make it into a toddler food.

I only have one very, very small complaint about this book (not enough to decrease my rating): in the introduction area of the book it says to be careful when selecting carrots to cook because in some areas of the country the nitrates in the soil are high, so make sure to get carrots that are grown in low-nitrate soil. However, in the carrot-recipe section of the book, it doesn't say anything about the nitrates. Personally, I think it would have been helpful to reiterate the warning in the recipe section. But that's the only complaint in the whole book that I have and it's a minor one.