Baby Veggie Mash Recipe

Making your own baby food is a great idea to ensure that your baby is getting as much food variety as possible. The following recipe is tried and tested, using easy-to-find root vegetables and is suitable for babies anytime they're ready from 4 months and onwards. Thin the recipe with the cooking water for younger babies, and leave soft lumps in the mash for babies around 8 months or older to encourage chewing.

Baby Veggie Mash

Ingredients:
3 parsnips
3 carrots
1 sweet potato or kumara, peeled
1 potato
a pinch of grated ginger root

Directions:
Scrub all ingredients clean, or peel and rinse clean. (Vegetable skins have lots
of nutrients, so if you can keep the skins on the tender veggies, it’s a good
idea to try.) Cut into large pieces.
Place the ingredients into a steamer over boiling water. Place a pinch of grated fresh ginger on top.
Steam vegetables until very tender. Mash or blend until desired consistency. Use some of the hot cooking liquid from the steamer pot if you need to thin the texture of the vegetable mash.
Place into clean ice cube trays & cover with plastic film. Place into freezer immediately to freeze.

Reheat in a serving bowl to hot and steaming as needed.

IMPORTANT:
When making your own baby food, it is critical that all your cooking utensils are scrupulously clean, and that you are working in a clean, uncluttered cooking environment. Wash your hands thoroughly before handling any of the cooked food. If you are using an ice cube tray to freeze your baby food in, use a heat-proof one that you can sterilise in boiling water before using.

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Some interesting facts about the ingredients in this recipe:

• Ginger has been used for centuries to calm colicky babies tummies.
• Cooked carrots are a source of vitamin A, potassium, and contain vitamin B6, copper, folic acid, and magnesium.
• Kumara are a source of Vitamin A, Vitamin C, and provide fibre and potassium.
• Parsnips are a good source of fibre, and a source of niacin, vitamin C and potassium.

We're mums & dads too.

Thought we'd share a picture of our latest bundle of joy, helping himself to, well, what else, a pot of Stages baby food. This is Coleton, our nearly 8 month old son, whose mum Dana can proudly say he's never caught a whiff of that jarred stuff and keeps having to pinch herself at how convenient Stages really is (and sure, we're biased!).

His idea of a good meal is Sweet Green Pea & Parsely Risotto, with a bit of 4 month Kumara puree on the side, followed by a happy helping of Apple Date & Coconut pudding for dessert.

Send us your baby photos* and comments to askus@stagesfood.co.nz, and we'll publish them here! (oh yes, and you'll automatically go into our monthly prize draws too!)

*TIP: please keep photo file sizes on the smallish size so that they load more quickly for viewers... thank you!

We won!!

Ok, it's not often that we get to bang our own drum, but we admit right now to feeling compelled to. About two months back we received a phone call from FMCG magazine, asking "if we wouldn't mind that our product go to Paris to be judged at SIAL d'Or". (They had discovered our "Sweet Sensations" baby meal, which has a tray of Blueberry, Banana & Greek Yogurt dessert, and Apple Coconut & Date Pudding and wanted to enter it in the Frozen Desserts category.)

Even after finding out that we couldn't get packed up in the same suitcase as our product, we most happily agreed - then put it to the back of our mind as we awaited the results. In May, we recieved another call from the magazine and you might imagine our suprise to hear that we'd placed third in our category, (a bronze, just behind "Molten Pots of Chocolate" from Canada), and that we'd won the gold medal for New Zealand!

So knock us over with a feather, but we are so proud of what this says about our food. Not only is it a dessert that is free of added sugar, salt or other additives, but it was designed for our babies who truly deserve the very best.

SIAL judges award points, which is how determinations are made. Even more recently we've gone on to discover that we in fact scored the FIFTH HIGHEST SCORE across all categories and all countries.

Not bad, n'est pas?

Our thanks go out to Peter Mitchell, editor of FMCG magazine who goes to Paris on behalf of the New Zealand food industry every two years and presents on the industry's behalf. And our thanks to all other SIAL d'Or judges who evaluated our efforts so highly.

About SIAL d'Or. The prestigious SIAL d'Or awards are selected bi-annually by an international panel of 25 food journalists recognising the best, innovative food products in the world across eight categories.

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