We love clementines in our house. We eat as many clementines as possible during the cold winter months. They are the perfect combination of sweet and tangy. They are just the right size for easy snacking. They can go any where are aren’t too messy.
About a month ago we started giving the girls clementines, but peeling the fruit then the membrane, then cutting the slices into several pieces was sometimes too much work to deal with and totally defeated the purpose of the ease of the clementine.
Maybe I’m slow, maybe I just make things hard on myself. But I finally found a ridiculously simple solution to this problem.
Cut The Clementine
Yes that simple.
Peel as normal
Remove as much of the stringy stuff as you can, it’s hard to breakdown with baby gums. Then half it.
Cut twice through all the slices within the half cross ways, any knife will work even a plastic one for on the go.
Then pull apart the smaller pieces along the membrane.
Now you have bite size clementine pieces perfect for toddler munching.
Dinner Time!
This is one of those posts that has been in my drafts folder for several months. In an attempt to not let the writing go to waste I have decided to use the story of feeding our babies food as the start of a new series for my blog. Each week (hopefully) I will post a toddler meal and a people meal, sometimes they will be the same, sometimes they will be different.
It’s the simplest kitchen appliance ever, fill the pot with water, chop the food you want to steam into large chunks and place in the steamer tray, press the one button all the way down. Check it after 15 minutes, if a fork goes in and out easily, it’s done. We would then use the Ninja to puree, but any blender or even a hand masher will work fine. The baby food makers are also really great they do both steps, steaming and pureeing, in one machine, but we already had the other two machines on hand so we didn’t need to add anything new to our kitchen counters. We would make a big batch, portion it into ice cube trays and freeze it for later use. There are ice cube trays with covers just for this. When it was time for them to eat we we could choose what combination to feed them, chicken, broccoli & sweet potato or beans, apples and squash. Take one or two cubes of each out of the freezer and pop it into the microwave either together or separately. Having so many choices ready to go was really convenient. The thing is, babies eating purees only lasts about three months, before we knew it, around eight months, with a freezer full of homemade baby food, our girls were ready to start chewing! So instead of pureeing we started giving them the tiniest slivers of table food, banana, chicken, pieces of pasta, quinoa, cauliflower and broccoli. We had to freeze their food a little differently now. First we would steam, mash or cut, but not purée, the foods, then portion it into the ice cube trays just the same so that we can still feed them healthy quick meals as soon as we arrive from work. We did this with most of the same foods that we previously pureed. But now we could add tiny bites of whole grain breads and tiny pieces of fresh fruit. When I say tiny pieces, I mean tiny and soft, about the size of a baby’s finger nail and soft enough to mash between your thumb and index finger.
Turkey Lettuce Wraps
Good little eaters
We have really good eaters. Yes, it takes some coaxing when a new food is presented but with a little time and patience these two little buggers will eat pretty much anything.
We still stay mostly away from foods that require those chomped teeth in the back to really break down, but even when we do feed them these tougher foods we either cut them tiny enough to swallow whole, about a quarter inch square or they just spit out what they can’t break down.
We always give them a sippy cup of water with each meal or snack. It’s easy to forget that babies need to drink their water too. They are still too young to ask for it.
We have learned that the babies eat fine when we feed them by themselves but they eat and sit so nicely when we eat with them and even more so when there are other children at the table. They are mesmerized by other kids, it really fun to watch.
