10 Healthy Foods My Toddler Will Eat

Penelope is a mildly picky eater.  She wont eat everything that is put in front of her like she did when she was a baby (we did baby led weaning), but there are still plenty of healthy and nutritious things she will eat.  

Here are her Top 10:


1. Eggs.  Scrambled, fried, hard boiled, or raw in her smoothie.  She eats about 2 to 3 eggs a day.


2. Steak.  She is not a fan of chicken, but she will eat an entire steak for dinner.


3. Hotdogs.  I know this may be questionable, but I personally think it is fine.  I buy organic with no nitrates and I peel the skin.


4. Smoothies.  She gets a smoothie most every day.


5. Fruit.  She loves apples, bananas and all kinds of berries, frozen and fresh.

6. Almonds.  She likes almonds and pecans.  I soak them and dehydrate them to make them easier to digest and give her about a handful when she wants them.


7. Cheese.  I wish she would eat raw cheese, but I have not found a flavor that she likes. She will only eat mossarezzla string cheese.  Which has some protien and nutrients in it, but because it's processed it really lacks the vitamins and nutrients of raw cheese.  But I figure it's a better snack than chedder bunnies.


8. Raw Milk.  Once I night weaned her, she started requesting cow's milk.  I give her about 2 sippy cups full of raw milk a day. I made the mistake of letting her have some Horizon Organic vanilla flavored milk at Starbucks one day and now I have to put a bit of it in her raw milk.  So I mix about an ounce of the Horizon vanilla in with her cup of raw milk.


9. Fish Nuggets.  When she was  a baby she would eat baked salmon, but not anymore.  I found some wild caught, Alaskan fish nuggets that are Gluten Free and she LOVES them.


10. Brocolli. Sautéed in a ridiculous amount of butter.  She will eat like 2 cups worth when I fix it.  But it has to be fresh, she wont eat it heated up the next day.


She also loves to eat soup, and on occasion: bacon, sausage, butter straight with a spoon, yogurt bites with probiotics, guacamole (but not avocados) Go Raw granola bars (sprouted and soaked grains) and the random vegetable other than broccoli, asparagus and corn mostly, and the occasional organic Elmo cracker or veggie sticks chips.

What does your toddler's eating habits like?  Is there anything you wish he/she ate?  I wish Penelope still ate fried bananas!  Oh, and liver pate. She used to love her some liver pate, now she hates.  :(



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I came across the EIO Sippy Cup on a random google search and immediately fell in love.  I am ga-ga for mason jars and the concept of a safe, mason jar cup with a lid was just too awesome to not make an immediate purchase.

Penelope got another one for Christmas so now she has two, purple and green.  She is still a little young to use it by herself, but I love that this cup will actually help teach her how to use a regular cup without a lid, unlike other sippy cups.  I think she likes that it's more like a grown up cup too.

They wash easy, store easy, carry along in the diaper bag easy (although don't turn your bag upside down or anything crazy, because it's not spill proof).  This is my new diaper bag these days (which is freaking awesome and my favorite PPB so far) and it has 5 million pockets and the EIO cup is the perfect size for the pockets and I never have any spillage.

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Fermented Lemonade

After Penelope's first birthday, I had a dozen organic lemons left over, that I had used as decoration.
I planned to make regular lemonade from scratch and then happened to find this post about how to make fermented lemonade and I was so happy to give it a try!

Fermenting adds enzymes and probiotics to the lemonade that make it a healthy alternative to regular lemonade or juice, not to mention this recipe doesn't call for regular white sugar.

I followed the directions from the above post and it came out great! I only used lemons, but you can add limes to the mix if you want.  It was very tasty. Not like sugar-laded,  store-bought, pasteurized lemonade, but very tasty.

I got this juicer for Christmas, so I am excited to try more fermented juice recipes. I know I can't protect Penelope forever from store bought juice, but I hope to always make any juice I give her and keep her from being addicted to sugar, like 99% of kids in our country.

Anyway, just wanted to share that this is a good recipe and it came out tasty. This is a perfect way to start doing fermentation at home.

For more fermented beverage and food recipes, check out this cookbook.

P.S. I got those bottles at World Market, but you can also find them online or at a local brewery supply store.

Starting Solids: Blackberries are a Hit!

I intended for this to be a post about eating local, farm-fresh foods, but today is turning out to be pretty insane for me. So instead, its just a show and tell of a cutie patootie picture of Penelope eating her new favorite: blackberries!

Sugar Snap Peas Baby Food

These are some super DELICIOUS sugar snap peas, from Turkey Hill Farm, that I got at the Lake Ella Farmer's Market the other week.

They were picked at the peak of their sweetness and they are oh so yummy. I got enough for me to munch on and to make some for Penelope. I once read about a New York chef, who introduced her babies to solid foods by offering only what was in season.

She figured that by doing it that way, she would always offer a food at their best possible taste and have a better chance of her child liking what she offered. It's a theory I would like to try as well, especially after I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle last year.

















First, I de-vained the peas, and then I steamed them for just a couple of minutes, not very long at all. You could do this with raw peas too, you get more nutrition out the peas that way.  Next, I put them in my mini food processor and grinded them up good. I left lots of texture though.


















Then I added the secret ingredient...Breast Milk!! Mmm...look at all that yummy fat at the top! If you wondered why Penelope weighs 20 pounds at 5 months, this is why.

The finished product. I put one tablespoon into each ice cube section. My plan is to give these to her frozen in one of those mesh thingys. I thought it might be a soothing teething tool and great way for her to taste the food without choking. I am skipping the whole spoon-feed-pureed-baby-food and going straight to seeing what she can get in her mouth herself.

Mostly out of pure laziness, I do not want to spend lots of time making baby food and dealing with spoon feeding her. It's called Baby Led Weaning, because technically the moment you introduce solids you have begun the weaning process.