First Meals : A simply delightful book, which is beautifully illustrated to introduce your baby to the wonderful world of food!

Ever since my two children were born I have purchased so many books that I could give Amazon.com a run for their money - what money? Ha! Poor old Amazon, but I digress.............!

I think every parent sets out with the very best of intentions when they first introduce their baby to solids. I tried very hard with my first child to feed him an array of different foods, but to this day, his favourite meal is homemade Macaroni Cheese. If it comes out of box - even better! He looks upon vegetables as a deadly opponent in the nightly battle we have with him at most meal times. So with baby "#2", both my husband and I decided to feed her the freshest, healthiest and variety of foods we could, in the vain hope that we could make amends for our earlier failures!

I went searching for books on weaning your baby. I had purchased an excellent book entitled: "Feeding your Child for Lifelong Health". While the book covered important issues on children's nutrition, it did not offer me enough recipe ideas or menus to try out with our daughter. See my review on this book at:
http://www.epinions.com/book-review-4BFB-5B5114D-39A8AA8C-prod3

First Meals by Annabel Karmel is published by Dorling Kindersley (DK) Books. DK books are synonymous with beautifully detailed, highly photographic reference books. First Meals is no exception. The book covers every conceivable detail graphically, ranging from photos of feeding bowls, spoons and sippy cups (surprisingly useful, albeit obvious!) to photos of the fruit and vegetables (very useful for this Brit who only knows a zucchini as a courgette!)

First Meals is broken down into the following sections:

Introduction, Equipment, Preparation of Baby Food, Freezing and Reheating Food

The following sections cover recipe ideas and specific age related nutritional guidelines:

* 4 - 6 months: Introduction of solids, first foods
* 6 - 9 months: Introducing new tastes, advanced purees
* 9 - 12 months: Self-feeding, finger foods, varying the diet
* 12 - 18 months: Integrating into family meals, toddler's nutrition
* 18 months - 2 years: Dealing with fussy eaters (oh YES!), quick meals
* 2 - 3 years: Party ideas, fun foods
* 3 - 5 years: Good breakfasts, international tastes

Finally, the concluding section covers the Menu Planner for each age group listed above.

Book in hand and opened strategically at the "Introducing your Baby to Solids" page, we prepared baby for that very first feeding outing. The book covers how to judge the quantity and the consistency of baby cereal and even shows the best position for baby and what to do if she rejects this new experience. More importantly, this section teaches you to recognize the signs that baby is ready for solids.

There seems to be conflicting thoughts on when the best age is to introduce solids. In England, I was told the best age was four months (or 16 weeks after expected due date); here in the US, my Pediatrician recommended starting our daughter at six months. Signs include your baby being interested in the food YOU eat, or appears to be less satisfied with their usual milk feedings. We started our daughter at five months following the above suggestions. Until there is a general consensus on this, I would suggest following your instincts and checking with your child's Pediatrician.

Our daughter took to feeding like a duck to water. We continued with baby rice cereal mixed with breast milk or formula, supplementing it with a small amount of mashed banana. But here is a confession. When we introduced vegetables, I opted to use jar food! The simple reason was because we really wanted to feed our daughter organic vegetables and fruit and finding organic produce proved tricky at first. We introduced vegetable purees via the Earth's Best range of baby food, which is organic and GM free (oh boy... GM foods - now there's an ENTIRE review in itself!). Furthermore, high nitrate vegetables such as green beans, spinach, carrot, squash, greens etc., given to babies before eight months, gets converted into harmful nitrites in young babies' stomachs. Commercial baby food manufacturers obtain their produce from areas where nitrate levels are low. (1).

(1) Reference: "Feeding your Child for Lifelong Health" page 145.

Once we found a supermarket (thank you WholeFoods Market!) selling organic produce, we made our own purees which really were not as time consuming as you would think. First Meals covers food preparation in detail even showing photos of spoons of the purees and their correct consistency! The section on batch freezing was particular useful.

From five to six months, we led our baby on a wonderful journey of taste discovery, introducing new flavours after a few days of showing no reaction to the new food. We tended to stick with vegetable purees at first, believing that fruit purees might dissuade our daughter from the more bitter taste of vegetables. There is no actual proof to support this theory, but this was our personal preference.

From six months the recipes got much tastier than the pleasant, but monotonous purees. Our daughter graduated to Fillet of Cod with a trio of Vegetables and Dried Apricots with Semolina - she was beginning to eat better than her brother (not difficult!). By the time she got to nine months she was beginning to feed herself (messy, but fun!). We began to introduce finger foods such as small pieces of mashed banana, and cooked carrot pieces, however Karmel's suggestion of introducing raw vegetables sticks as finger foods is not recommended by some Pediatricians, although she does state in her book that a baby should not be left unsupervised when eating.

Our daughter at ten months now eats a varied, nutritionally sound diet and so far has welcomed each recipe with enthusiasm! Each recipe states the preparation and cooking time, portions, nutritional information and whether it is suitable for freezing.

So... Why just four stars....?

It is important to know that this book was originally published in England. With this in mind, some of Karmel's thoughts on introducing whole milk from six months, albeit just in cooking, were not recommended by my Pediatrician. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends babies do not get introduced to whole milk until one year. I substituted formula milk in the recipes that called for whole milk with great success.

The very aspect I love about the book, such as the food made into fun shapes, also annoys me. Cucumbers cut into star shapes, or butterfly shaped cheese, look lovely, but time-constrained parents probably do not have the time or inclination to "fuss" with the food. Birthday parties are an exception of course! The book cover also implies that the recipes are "fast". Well, indeed some of them are, others though are much more complicated and a little time consuming to prepare. Karmel is a trained Cordon Bleu cook and it shows!

I'm a "metric" girl from Europe! In other words, I am used to using metric scales. The book has been converted to American cup measurements, but some of the recipes seemed a little 'mushy' so I had to judge by eye the correct consistency.

Overall, the book cannot be faulted. It is visually stunning with some brilliant ideas on how to prepare good food and make it fun! It has made the transition to solids for our daughter a gratifying experience for all of us.

....Salmon Starfish on Shredded Green Bean Seaweed anyone?!


Recommended: Yes