Baby Stew

My daughter, from the beginning, has preferred foods with flavour. Now that she's nine months old, I'm having a lot of fun experimenting. I called this one Baby Stew, and she loves it. So did a friend of ours, who had a lovely bowl of it for lunch one day!

The beauty of this recipe is that you can easily alter the veggies, and the proportions aren't really that important. I tried to provide something of a balance between protein, starch, etc so that it would be a meal in itself, and then I froze it in Baby Cubes so that I can easily serve it to her when I don't have time to make a meal.

Ingredients:

leek (white part only)

ginger (to taste)

garlic (to taste)

olive oil

red lentils

pot barley (pearl has the healthiest parts removed)

yam

sweet potato

carrot

fresh spinach (frozen would probably be fine too)

Method:

chop up all the veg. don't need to be too careful about how small. Panfry the leek until soft, then add the garlic and ginger. Toss in the lentils and barley to absorb the yummy flavours. Add the rest of the veggies, cover with water, and simmer until everything is soft. Add the spinach at the very last minute, so that it just barely wilts and doesn't overcook.

At this point, you could serve it to adults or older children. I used a hand blender to ensure there were no chunks bigger than the barley, but my daughter chews well. You could easily blend it longer for a younger child, or one who doesn't like texture as much.