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When to Start
Babies are ready for solid food at 4 to 6 months. Some signs to look for are: They can sit up with little support, they’re showing interest in your food and their appetite isn’t satisfied with just formula or breast milk. At this age, a baby’s tongue should be able to swallow food and not just push their tongues against the spoon. And as the old saying goes, “practice makes perfect” — it’ll take time for your little one to learn the proper skills to eat.

What to Start With
An iron-fortified, single-grain cereal (like rice cereal) is a common first food, but according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, no research or evidence suggests a specific order to introducing fruits, veggies or single-grain cereals. I got my kids started with Gerber’s rice cereal mixed with breast milk. One thing is certain — introduce only one new food at a time (usually every 5 to 7 days) to make sure you catch any potential food allergies. Some good low-allergy first foods include peas, carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, apricots, bananas, string beans, apples and pears. Wait on tropical fruits (mango, papaya) and berries until around 9 to 12 months.

Another warning: Try different colored fruits and veggies. Infants who are introduced only orange foods (i.e. apricots, carrots, sweet potatoes) may turn orange due to an overdose in beta-carotene (it happened to my sister-in-law!). Don’t worry — it goes away once you cut back on the orange foods.

How to Make It
This is the simple part. There’s no need to add salt, herbs, spices or anything else. Infants have many more taste buds than adults (you lose your taste buds as you age), so they’re very sensitive to strong flavors. First foods should only include the fruit or veggie and water; you might also try breast milk or formula in place of water.

Here’s an example on how to make pears:
1) Wash 3 to 4 pears and slice in quarters (leave the peel on).
2) Place pears in a medium-sized saucepan and cover with water (1 inch over the fruit).
3) Bring to a boil, lower heat and cover. Let cook for 15 to 20 minutes or until pears are fork-soft.
4) Let the pears cool 15 minutes.
5) Place pears with half the water into a blender and puree until smooth. Keep adding water until the mixture has reached a thin consistency (you want it as thin as the jarred stuff).

Make sure you end up with a thin paste — if you don’t add enough water, your child might become constipated. When I made mine, I used a hand blender, which travels well and cleans easily.

Stepping It Up
Once you introduced several foods, you can start to mix and match to create new flavors. You might try combinations like carrots and peas, sweet potatoes and pears, or apples and pears — just follow the same steps as making the pears above.

Once your infant reaches 7 to 8 months, try introducing meats and poultry. One of the first meats for my kids was veal because it has a pretty mild flavor. I’d bring home a beautiful veal chop from the butcher and my husband would be disappointed to learn it was for the baby (I’d find it hilarious!). When cooking up the veal chop, I’d mix in some fruits or veggies that I had already introduced like sweet potatoes, peas and carrots. Just fill the pot with water so it goes 1 inch above the veal, add in the chopped veggies and boil for about 45 minutes until the veal is cooked-through and softened. One extra tip: Keep the bone in the pot while cooking your “veal stew” so the minerals get absorbed into the water (remove it before pureeing).

Here are some more of my favorite baby food combos:
• Veal chop, potato and pears
• Veal chop, string beans, sweet potato, zucchini and a handful of peas
• Chicken breast, peas and carrots
• White or brown rice, string beans and apples

Storage Tips
Keep fresh baby food in the refrigerator for 3 to 5 days or store it in the freezer for up to a month. Ice cube trays are a good way to dish out portions. Baby stores also sell single-serving freezer containers. You might try cleaning and sanitizing old store-bought baby jars to reuse — just be sure the cap fits back on properly.

For other ideas and recipes, Food Network’s Tyler Florence dedicated an entire chapter in his book Dinner At My Place to making baby food.

TELL US: Have you ever made your own baby food? Any tips or tricks to try?

Did the Co-Host Plagiarize?
Elizabeth Hasselbeck, co-host of The View, recently released the book The G-Free Diet: A Gluten-Free Survival Guide and is now being sued for copyright infringement. Sue Hassett, author of Living with Celiac Disease, claims she sent a free copy of her book to Hasselbeck. The lawsuit says Hasselbeck’s book lifted paragraphs from Hasset’s. I can’t imagine why a TV personality would copy someone else’s work. They can just hire ghost writers if they don’t have the time, but I’ve heard stranger things. I wonder how this drama will end. Anyone read either book? Are they worth the hubbub?

Soda Taxes: Yay or Nay?
CNBC recently aired this debate between a guest (and my mentor) Dr. Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics, and host Dennis Kneale. The discussion focused on government-mandated soda tax versus one’s personal responsibility to lose weight. Do you think the government should stay out of it?

Recall Alert
This week two big recalls hit the news: Nestle Toll House refrigerated cookie dough and pistachios. Testing on prepared cookie dough found that it contained E. Coli, and the FDA warns you not to eat it raw (cooking can actually kill the bug). Whether you cook it or eat it as is, your best bet is to bring the recalled products back to your market. As for the pistachios, seems that the manufacturers repackaged the originally recalled product and sent them back out again — smooth move, guys.

How to Cook Carrots For Better Health
A new study released by Newcastle University concluded that cooking carrots whole (rather than diced up) retains more nutrients and enhances their anti-cancer properties by 25%. The study also conducted a blind taste test and found that more people preferred the taste of whole carrots. So the next time you cook up this veggie, save yourself some prep time and don’t chop them.

5 Ridiculously High-Calorie Foods
I fell off my chair reading the calories in these foods! You would think the 1,500-calorie, deep-fried portobello mushroom sandwich, stuffed with cheese between two cheeseburger buns, from New York’s Shake Shack’s was bad enough. It pales in comparison to the 4,556-calorie Mega Mel Burger from Mel’s Country Café in Texas. This 1 1/2 pound burger is topped with a pound of bacon, 1/4 pound of American cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, pickle and bun. Yuck!

Benefits of Juicing
Lots of healthy pros tout juicing as a way to naturally detox, lose weight and keep a healthy colon — unfortunately, there is no significant scientific evidence that juicing necessarily does these things. What we do know, however, is that fruits and veggies have tons of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and fiber.

Making your own juice using fresh ingredients is definitely better than the processed versions you might find at the store. Yours will be free of chemicals or additives (there’s no high-fructose corn syrup when you do it yourself!). Fresh juice blends also contain more fiber from the pulp — the processed versions typically have the pulp extracted.

A homemade juice is also a quick way to get your daily dose of fruits and veggies. The National Cancer Institute encourages 9 servings of fresh fruits and veggies a day to help decrease the risk of cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Creating a cucumber, carrots and celery juice can knock off your veggie requirements in a few gulps.

In some cases, juicing is easier than eating foods whole. Guava has tons of seeds, pomegranates are tough and messy to prep and eat, and wheatgrass is hard on digestion in its whole form. Juicing can get you the B-vitamins from pomegranate, potassium and folate from guava and iron from wheatgrass without a problem.

What To Juice
You can juice almost any fruit or vegetables! Some simple fruits to start with are apples, melons, citrus and berries. Citrus fruit and strawberries have tons of vitamin C and melons are good for both vitamins A and C. Carrots, celery, cucumber, tomatoes, beets and lettuce are common veggies to try, too. Carrots have tons of the antioxidant beta-carotene and tomatoes contain potassium and vitamin C.

When and How Much
Juicing is a healthy option sometimes, but you shouldn’t juice everything or do it all the time. A couple months ago, we talked about how fruit juice can be a high-calorie treat. Minding your portions is a must. Each fruit has 60 calories — add too many and your calories (not to mention sugar intake) will skyrocket. Stick to juicing only once a day. Eating whole, fresh fruits and veggies are also an important part of a healthy diet.

Also, know this: food prep techniques (including juicing) easily destroy vitamins when they’re exposed to air. To get the most out of your juice, drink up right away.

Flavor Combos
There are endless combinations of flavors. Here are some ideas of what goes together:

• Cucumber: carrots and celery
• Spinach: tomatoes, celery and carrots
• Lettuce: parsnips, carrots, spinach, sprouts
• Papaya: pineapple, orange and cucumbers
• Various melons: strawberries
• Grapes: apples, melon, peach and cranberries

Juicers
Before electricity, reamers were the most common way to juice. Nowadays there are endless juicers available — from higher-end, more expensive power juicers to medium-sized citrus juicers to retro-looking juice pressers. Buy a juicer that fits your needs and budget — forgo the $250 juicer if you don’t plan on using it often.

Make sure you take apart and clean your juicer after each use and follow the manufacturer’s directions. A dirty juicer can harbor bacteria — something you don’t want to drink!

Recipes to try:
• Sunrise Juice
• Melon Juice
• Vegetable Juice Cocktail
• Gingered Vegetable Juice

TELL US: What’s your favorite juicing combo?

The Benefits of Steaming
You may have heard this before: steaming is one of the best ways to cook veggies so they keep their nutrients. Vitamins are easily destroyed when you cook with water for long periods of time (i.e. boiling), but steaming uses the steam from boiling water to cook your food — not the water directly.

Another advantage of steaming is no added fat or sodium (do you dab butter in a boiling pot of broccoli or load in the salt?). Any veggie you steam will be around 25 calories per half-cup and chock-full of vitamins and minerals.

Veggies to Choose
Broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, asparagus, artichokes, zucchini and green beans are great choices because they’re sturdier and won’t turn to mush too easily. Leafy greens — baby bok choy, spinach and Chinese broccoli — also steam up nicely but take less time. If you want to try something new, steam some radishes or quartered new potatoes.

How to Steam
Large chunks of veggies are tough to steam quickly — so if you’re in a hurry, cut or trim your vegetables into smaller pieces first.

A steaming basket is a cheap way to steam food. Fill a pot with 2 ounces of water and place the basket with the veggies on top. Once the water boils, it takes anywhere from 5 to 12 minutes to cook. It depends on the thickness of the veggie so you may want to check periodically (but don’t keep lifting the lid!) and pull them off when they hit your preferred softness. And, please, don’t forget the lid. You won’t get anywhere unless the steam is trapped in the pot.

Immediately after steaming, have a colander of ice or bowl of ice water ready to plunge — or “shock” — your cooked goodies. This will stop the cooking process so your veggies stay nice and crunchy.

While we prefer the old-fashioned way, you can also steam in the microwave. There are some microwave-ready steam veggie packs you can buy at the grocery store. Or just place evenly cut veggies in a microwave-safe bowl (glass), add a little water to bottom and top with microwave-safe plastic wrap. You’ll want to pull back one corner of the topper so some steam can escape — no need for an explosion. Usually, the stovetop method takes the same amount of time.

Tools to Use
I always have trouble steaming asparagus because it doesn’t fit well. I checked around and found this asparagus steamer, which is my next kitchen purchase. There are also stack & steam sets available, which let you cook pasta and steam veggies at the same time (a real time, energy and dish-washing saver). You might have a bamboo steamer at home — they’re typically used for Chinese dim sum but also work for steaming veggies. A double boiler is a make-shift solution, too, as long as there are holes in it.

The Flavor Traps
Now that you’ve used a healthy cooking method, don’t go adding tons of high-calorie toppings such as oil, cheese or butter (my clients do it all the time!). If you decide to add butter or oil, stick to 1 tablespoon and measure it out. Lemon, garlic or just a dash of black pepper work wonders. I love a spritz of fresh lemon on my steamed asparagus. Try mixing a few minced garlic cloves with a teaspoon of olive oil and drizzle over broccoli.

Recipes to try:
• Steamed Vegetable Ribbons
• Steamed Baby Vegetables
• Steamed Green Beans with Pine nuts
• Steamed Baby Spinach
• Steamed Asian Greens with Honey Soy Sesame Dressing
• Steamed Artichoke

TELL US: Do you have a special steaming trick?

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