Below is a selection of books my parent-baby hospital classes recommended picking up for starting solids. I’ve had a flip through Child of Mine (apparently my attention span isn’t what it used to be), picked out a few favorite recipes from Feeding the Whole Family, and read Baby-led Weaning and Hungry Monkey from cover to cover. The basic premise of Child of Mine is to prepare good, healthy food for your child, but let your child decide if and how much she wants to eat. Feeding the Whole Family encourages you to cook with real foods, and it is the first recipe book I’ve come across that strongly encourages you to stock sea vegetables, or at least give them a try. Whenever there was a recipe with an ingredient I did not recognize, in other books it was usually an obscure grain, legume, or spice, but in this book it was probably a sea vegetable like arame, dulse, dulse flakes, hijiki, kombu, nori, and wakame.

I’ll get into Baby-led Weaning a bit later, but I thought I’d jot my thoughts down about Hungry Monkey. I was drawn to it because of the subtitle: “A Food Loving Father’s Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater;” I was hoping to take away some tidbits to help avoid bringing up a child that was as picky as I was.  I borrowed it from my local library on my Kindle app for the iPad, and it was a great to read over a couple weeks during breastfeeding sessions. I was surprised to find a very large portion of the book available online as a sampler here, so I definitely recommend checking that out.

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Hungry Monkey is written by a Seattle food critic and stay at home dad so it’s fun to feel “in” on all the local grocery stores, coffee shops, and restaurants he mentions. There is a section where he reveals, like many Seattlites, that he not-so-secretly would love to move to Vancouver, BC. He writes about things in Vancouver that I’ve never heard of, despite the fact that I grew up there.

Hungry Monkey is basically a book of anecdotes about his daughter, who graduates from spicy-loving, adventurous baby to super picky toddler, with a handful of recipes scattered in between. So in the end his daughter isn’t as adventurous as he (and I) would have hoped. The recipes perhaps aren’t the most child-friendly, and they seem to be geared more at post-solids introduction; in essence, the book reflects the struggle of a brussels sprout loving foodie in preparing meals his family that his daughter may or may not eat. It almost seems like his publishers may have forced him to make the recipes more relatable to the average parent, because he sometimes prefaces a recipe with how a small child could help out in preparation, but most of the suggestions seem like weak afterthoughts. Maybe this stemmed from a fear of letting a small human into his man cave, the kitchen, but when he eventually did, he was pleasantly surprised.

He scoffs at cooking that doesn’t involve “cooking,” (ie standing over the pan and sauteing the whole time), but he does eventually give the crock pot and pressure cooker a try. I do question some of his choices, like mackerel, especially for young children with little iron stores and at most risk for mercury accumulation, not to mention their little kidneys that should preclude typical adult salt intake. He defends his daughter’s love for sushi by saying it’s just something very Pacific Northwest, and times have changed so when she gets to school, she’d probably be made fun of for not liking sushi.

Recipes of interest include:

  • Ants on a tree
  • Yeasted Waffles
  • Roasted trout with Fennel, Onion and Cilantro
  • Baked pasta with Cauliflower
  • Roasted Parsnips
  • Lemony Chard and Escarole
  • Mini Frittatas with Mushrooms
  • Chicken stew with smoked paprika
  • Shredded beef tacos
  • Thai salad dressing  

Throughout the book he lists some very specific choice ingredients and food suggestions that piqued my interest, so I’ll have to keep an eye out for them while I shop:

  • Spice Islands brand ancho chile powder
  • Dry-aged steaks 
  • Boar’s Head all beef hot dogs with natural casings  
  • mac and cheese with: strained salsa, sriracha, spice green tomatillo salsa, cauliflower
  • Pagliacci’s pear primo: sliced pears, walnuts, blue cheese
  • Trader Joe’s jarred morello cherries
  • Muir Glen Fire Roasted Tomatoes
  • Lion and Globe Peanut Oil

He said his method of pureeing foods for the baby was done entirely with a chef’s knife, and I was pleasantly surprised to try out this technique the other day with cooked spinach, and I am a believer! Not to mention that I didn’t even have to clean out a blender or food processor. If I didn’t already have a great Henckel’s knife, I would totally take up his suggestion for the inexpensive Forschner Victorinox 8″ chef’s knife, which he says runs around $25. Apparently it beats expensive German and Japanese knives in magazine ratings, and it’s got great reviews on Amazon.

He lists some book recommendations, both child and adult. He (and his daughter) have an obvious penchant for Asian food, as reflected by their taste in books. He does suggest one of my favorite board book series, World Snacks, which feature great mixed media collages and tackle everything from sushi, to dim sum, to Indian and Jewish fare. Among his adult recommendations, I will be sure to check out:

It was an enjoyable, quick read, and I love that I came away with more than just a few recipe ideas. I appreciate that it’s not a long, bland read, like many baby books tend to be. The author is self-consciously witty and is somehow able to make a reference to an obscure, short-lived character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer like everyone should know what he’s talking about. (I was a decent fan of the show — yay for Seth Green and Spike!).

Go check out that preview I had mentioned, or see if your local library carries it.

What “non-traditional” baby books have you read in preparing for cooking good, wholesome solids?