First meals

a must-have

I love this cookbook. I love cooking, though, and often prepare elaborate meals for my husband and I. I do not feel that 20 minutes of work to make nutritionally dense food for my 8 mo. old is excessive. (She'll eat what I cook for two days so it's only 20 min. every two days) When she started eating more solid foods, she refused to eat plain steamed vegetables (pureed or not) and jar food. She put up such a fuss & refused to eat anything else besides fruit, string cheese or puffs. Not an optimal diet for a growing child. Naturally I was concerned because she used to eat a plethora of pureed foods (most were recipes from this book). I went back to the book to get recipes for 9 mos & up and it worked. She eats vegetables & anything else again. The recipes from this book are actually palatable to her. She loves to eat the food I make for her! As somebody who's done a masters in nutrition, I feel pleased with the diet I feed my child when I use recipes from this book. Yellow vegetables and cheese are so good for your growing baby. (There is a slight lack of green vegetables in the recipe but that is probably because they are less palatable; I often add mashed sweet peas to the recipes.) There is a previous review, however, that correctly mentions that fresh strawberries or eggs should not be fed to your child until he/she is one and there is a pureed strawberry recipe in this book. That's not approved by American pediatricians. Everything else, though, I have found to be good, sound advice. I highly recommend preparing your infant's food over jarred baby food and I highly recommend this book for that process. It is a little time-intensive but you don't have to cook every day. If you make extras, most of the foods are freezer-suitable even. I like that the microwave is left out of the cooking process in this book. Microwaving your food depletes it of anti-oxidant vitamins as well as other key nutrients. Overall, I think this book is an asset to people who want to pre...