fat beets

Our daughter started to eat solid foods in the fall when root vegetables are abundant.  Beets were her second solid food since they are packed with nutrients, in-season and a gorgeous color (which I think made them interesting to eat for her).  Beets are notoriously VERY messy to prepare.  I'll share my first short cut with you now. Steamed organic beets are sold in vacuum-packed packages at many grocery stores in the fresh produce section.  These packages are huge time-savers and offer a less-messy alternative to roasting, boiling or steaming your own beets.  Of course, there are advantages to preparing beets from scratch, but I’m a pragmatist, and the vacuum-packed steamed whole beets are delicious, economical and produce a better quality end-product than the beets you find smushed into baby food jars.  I’m not super-mom, remember? 

Puréed Beets

Bettina RD tells me that beets are an excellent source of folate, along with manganese, as well as a good source of fiber, vitamin C, potassium, and magnesium.  Folate, as with all of the B vitamins, is important for baby's growth since folate is needed for cell division.  To get the skinny on beet's powerful antioxidants which protect the arteries and red blood cells read more about that (and general beet lore) on her blog. If you're craving even more beet-specific nutritional information you can find it at nutritiondata.com.

Equipment:

• Food processor
• Silicone ice trays – I use silicone because the food is easier to pop out, but you can use an ice tray made of any material.
• 4 oz. small single-serving containers. Good for storing fresh food or frozen food that you want to take with you.  Ice trays aren’t great for to-go situations.

Ingredients:

• Vacuum-packed organic steamed beets.  I buy mine from Fresh Direct.

Instructions:

Open package and drop the pre-cooked beets into the large bowl of a food processor.  Make sure the large metal blade is installed first.  Add a small amount of water or low-sodium vegetable stock.  Purée until smooth.  If you want to thicken the purée with baby cereal and give it additional nutritional punch, you can.  I love and continue to use Happy Bellies brand available at diapers.com and Fresh Direct).  It is a powder-like probiotic and mixes beautifully into purées, formula and milk.

Spoon puréed beets into ice trays, cover with freezer-wrap and freeze.  

Our daughter started eating ½ a defrosted cube at a time, then progressed to one cube.  When she moved to two cubes, I started making and freezing more than one vegetable at a time so that she would have a little variety at each meal.  I do not use a microwave for defrosting.  I simply take a cube out of the freezer the night before and put it (or them) in a 4 oz. single-serving container, letting let the food defrost gradually in the refrigerator. 

If you are an on-the-go type of person or you send your child to day-care, you’ll want to have some fresh and frozen purées saved in the single-serving containers that are easily packed up.  The ice trays are great, but not so practical for when you are out and about or need to pack a set of meals for day-care!  I also recommend storing meal-sized batches of food you plan to serve your child for that week in single-serve containers that you don’t freeze.   Having these packed up in the fridge will give you the opportunity to feed your baby super-fresh nutrient-rich foods (that have never been frozen) on a weekly basis.  The small single-serve containers provide the benefit of portion monitoring and easily communicating how much food is to be served to your child at each meal if you're not the one feeding them all the time.

And the beet goes on ... As my daughter has gotten a little older and more of her teeth have come in, I replicate this recipe except I do NOT add liquid and only pulse the beets a couple of times so that they are chopped instead of pureed.  I call those vegetable portions “chops.”  At month 17 she still loves beets!  We always have a package of Melissa’s beets in the fridge as they are a snap to prepare and she will happily eat every morsel.

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