Baby Food in My Hair & A Giveaway

When I looked back on my eldest’s son’s first year there was one thing that I didn’t love so much (I mean, besides the sleep deprivation and endless diapers of course).  It was introducing solids.  It’s just so messy and tedious.  And confusing.  When to start, how often, how much and what is best?

I asked my sister, a Pediatric Dietitian practicing in the UK, for her advice.  She suggested starting the meal with solids and then finishing up with breast milk.  I consulted with her and we agreed to start solids once a day and move up to a full three meals a day.  Bastien full on vomited the first time I tried food.  Alex was much better and took to the food pretty well.

Contrary to popular belief, you can really start with anything.  We started with oat cereal but quickly moved on to other foods like bananas, avocados, carrots, sweet potato and zucchini.  Still, it’s a bit of a slog cooking and puréeing all those foods and I’m not a huge fan of pre-made baby food for routine use.

When a representative from Cariboo Distribution contacted me about receiving a Nutribaby I was intrigued.  Anything to make the process easier.  And maybe a bit more fun too.  I was vaguely familiar with the product but not too sure what it was all about.

Turns out that the Nutribaby literally does EVERYTHING.

• Sterilizes bottles (up to 3 bottles at a time)
• Warms bottles (up to 3 bottles at a time)
• Warms baby food
• Defrosts
• Steams food
• Purées/blends food

The instructions are easy to follow.  There’s IKEA-like drawings and written instructions.  There’s also a recipe  booklet.  The product is European, as is the cookbook, and I have a feeling there are a few different fields of thoughts on feeding babies.  I was surprised to see suggestions for a dessert including sugar (for over 12 months) and again a tip to introduce a little salt (again for over 12 months).  Although I wouldn’t follow those specific recipes, the rest of the recipes looked interesting and I’d definitely try them.

I tried out the steam and blend function using zucchini and sweet potato.  Times are given so that you can cook both at once.  Using the maximum weights given, I could fit in one sweet potato and two zucchinis.  It took all of 17 minutes total to cook both.  I then transferred it to the blender to puree, using a bit of the steam water that had collected in the bottom of the catch tray to loosen up the sweet potato (the zucchini has enough water).

Needless to say, it was pretty easy.

After trying it out a few times, I like the steam function but really love the blender.  The steamer/sterilizer detaches from the blender so I can keep just the blender on my countertop without it taking up too much room.  I find the stick (immersion) blender, which I used for my first son, was a bit tricky to get all the bits and the regular blender I have is too large and bulky – especially for the small batches I make.

My son does not take bottles (a whole other post on that subject!) so I was unable to try out that function.  I did use the sterilize function to sterilize his soothers though.

I fell in love with the Nutribaby and am using it to make all my baby food now.  Even if we move on to baby led weaning, which I am sure we will, we will still have to cook his food so it is soft enough for him to eat.

Roasted is giving away one Nutribaby valued at $140 to a lucky reader within Canada.  Please leave a comment below to enter.  

And it would be super nice if you’d like my Facebook page and follow me on Instagram too!

Contest is now closed.

Thank you to Cariboo Distribution for my Nutribaby and for offering one for the giveaway.

ps. Please check out this post for more advice on introducing solids (albeit from a UK guidance perspective), our experience introducing solids to our first son, and our experience with baby led weaning.