Turning baby food into family food.

With my both my kiddos I, for the most part, made my own baby food.  I made peas, carrots, and sweet potatoes in bulk.  Pureed and froze as instructed.  This was a fine system while we were going though the motions of introducing new foods one at a time.  When they were old enough to start mixing things together and have actual meals, I needed a new system.  I wanted them to be able to eat what we ate while still being baby friendly, i.e. less salt and spice, cooked well enough, and such.  So I had to think of a way to turn baby food into family food.  

I started with the following braised beef recipe.  This as written makes 5 baby portions suitable for freezing; but if I simply made more of it, it would feed a family of four no problem.  The most logical ingredient to look for when determining how much more I would need was the protein.  5 ounces of beef is about 1/3 lb which is a decent serving for a grown Daddy.  He would argue that, and we love leftovers.  So if I take 5 oz as one serving and I need 3 servings plus a baby serving I figured that if I tripled the recipe I'd have enough.  I quadrupled it to be safe.  After cooking, I pulled out enough for the baby and pureed it in my mini food processor.  Then added salt and pepper to taste for the rest of us.  It worked deliciously.  I was able to use this method for most baby puree recipes that I came across.

Braised Beef with Carrot, Parsnip, and Sweet Potato

Adapted from  Top 100 Baby Purees by Annabel Karmel

1 Tbsp olive oil

1/2 cup chopped red onion (or whatever you have on hand)

1 clove crushed garlic (I use the pre-minced in a jar, about 1 tsp per clove)

5 oz. lean stew beef

1/3 cup of flour

2 carrots, peeled and sliced

1 parsnip, peeled and sliced (if you can't find parsnip, use a couple peeled and chopped potato)

1 sweet potato, peeled and chopped

1 bay leaf

1 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley, or 1 tsp of dried parsley

1 3/4 cup chicken stock

Heat the oil in a saucepan.  Saute the onion and garlic until softened. In a bowl, toss the beef in the flour enough to coat.  Add beef to the pan and saute until browned all over.  Add the carrots, parsnips, sweet potato, bay leaf, and parsley to the pan and pour in the stock.  Bring to a boil and then simmer, covered for 2 hours until the meat is tender.