Asparagus: How to Offer This Food Safely to Your Baby

Katie Ferraro (1s):

Was your baby born in January, February, or March of 2023? Can you believe your baby is about to start Solid Foods? I'm hosting a three day baby led weaning bootcamp. May 31st to June 2nd. And If your baby is currently three, four or five months old. This is the training for you. The Baby Led Weaning Bootcamp is three days of video trainings and feeding guides all delivered to you by email. You don't have to take any time off or attend anything live. You get the entire baby led weaning Bootcamp for just $15. We're gonna be covering exactly what baby led weaning is, the research that supports it, and how to know when your baby is really ready for starting solid foods. I don't want you to be surprised when the actual time comes.

Katie Ferraro (43s):

Registration is now open for babies who are three, four, or five months old, and you can sign up at https://blwbootcamp.com. Space is limited. We do this just a few times a year. If you head to https://blwbootcamp.com before May 31st, you can get registered. I'll see you there. I want to share a new podcast that I've been listening to called Meditation for Moms. So I am a self-proclaimed, high-strung person. I know I'm a very fast talker. I have never been able to meditate on my own. So having a guide walk me through these meditations and the fact that the Meditation for Mom's Show is geared towards the realities of being a mom has been so helpful.

Katie Ferraro (1m 23s):

The Meditation for Mom's podcast is perfect. If you're looking for meditations for all of the seasons and circumstances and the peaks and the valleys of motherhood. The show's a little different because it's a podcast that's guided by a multitude of moms, each of whom brings their own experience and their gifts to their meditations. I know today I listen to a Reiki Meditation for Mother's episode, which is definitely outta the ordinary for me, but really helpful for calming before the workday started. You can check out all of the meditation podcasts at women's meditation network.com and then select the Meditation for moms, or search meditation for moms wherever you get your podcasts. And If, the idea of doing those shaved soft cook stocks of Asparagus.

Katie Ferraro (2m 5s):

They're about the size of your adult pinky finger. Like if you're like, no way Katie, that totally freaks me out. Then definitely try something like a cream of Asparagus soup that you offer out of an open cup for your baby. Very easy to make using a low sodium or no salt broth. Great opportunity for your baby to practice open cup drinking in kind of a lower stress inducing way for you to offer your baby that new flavor of Asparagus Hey there. I'm Katie Ferraro, registered dietician, college nutrition professor and mom of seven specializing in baby led weaning. Here on the baby led weaning made easy. podcast I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, leaving you with the confidence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (2m 57s):

Hey guys, welcome back. Checking in today about Asparagus. Have you offered this new vegetable to your baby in alphabetical order? If we're going down the list of vegetables on the 100 First Foods list, it's the second one. We've already choked first, Asparagus second. There's no particular order that you need to offer your baby fruits and vegetables in, but if you're following my five step feeding framework where we introduce five new foods each week, each Monday we do a new fruit. Each Tuesday we do a new vegetable Wednesday, a new starchy food, Thursday, a protein, and Friday and allergenic food. We do that allergenic food twice on Friday, twice on Saturday, twice on Sunday with no other new foods across the weekend. You start a new week and you need a new vegetable.

Katie Ferraro (3m 37s):

So if you haven't picked out your vegetable for next week and you haven't done Asparagus yet, here are some tips on how you can safely offer Asparagus to your baby. Now, let's start out with Asparagus. When is it available? If you are in North America, generally Asparagus is in season from late February until about June. Now, why would you want to offer your baby Asparagus? Well, there's lots of nutrition reasons and lots of, you know, there's fiber in there and some, some antioxidants, which to be honest, all fruits and vegetables have beneficial compounds in there. So there's nothing that like particularly sticks out with Asparagus as far as nutrition goes.

Katie Ferraro (4m 19s):

But one thing to be aware of is that Asparagus in about 25 to 50%, which is a huge range of people, it's gonna make the urine smell weird. So if you offer your baby Asparagus, be prepared for some stinky diapers. So there's this unique enzyme that's found in Asparagus that's going to make your baby's urine smell pungent. In many cases, some people actually lack the genetic makeup to identify or smell the stinky piece. So some people are like, oh, that smells so terrible, and other people are like, what are you talking about? Some people claim their urine doesn't smell from Asparagus. There's like literally a very large rabbit hole that you could go down on the internet about the smell from Asparagus in your pee, but it's not an indicator that anything is wrong, and so it's perfectly safe for babies to have.

Katie Ferraro (5m 6s):

I have to be honest that Asparagus isn't one of my favorite vegetables to feed early eaters. It's not like the first one that I do. I definitely have done it in the first week of baby led weaning just to show parents how you can. But there are certainly easier vegetables on the hundred first foods list, especially to start out with very early when you're a little bit nervous. But here's how I make Asparagus safe for baby led weaning. One thing you can do is if you make it for yourself, right, you can roast it or you can boil it. Now, there's some online debate as to if whether or not the cooking method that you choose for Asparagus changes the way it tastes. I personally love the taste of boiled Asparagus. don don't even need salt on it. I think it's so delicious. Roasted is fine. Roasting vegetables gives you the opportunity to add extra oil, right, and extra oil or extra fat is great because that oil is important for babies brain development, right?

Katie Ferraro (5m 55s):

We need that extra fat, but it also makes the foods easier to swallow. We don't wanna offer any really, really dry foods. So, we talked about adding lots of oil, And, If, you're not sure about how to add oil to your baby's diet. I did an episode back episode 256 was all about what type of oil should I use for baby led weaning? And that's a good one. If you just wanna be like, Hmm, well, can I use it? But the answer is yeah, if you use it at home, use it for your babies. So if you boil it, you generally don't put oil in it. But, I'll put a little bit of oil on it at the end when it's nice and soft. I like Asparagus as an adult. I think most people like it a little bit like when you pierce it with your fork. There's still a little bit of give. Even when you snap it after you cook it, there's still a little bit of snap if it snaps, it's not soft enough for your baby to eat, so you pull out the Asparagus that you want.

Katie Ferraro (6m 42s):

If you're boiling it when it's at the doneness or tenderness, texture you want, but let it keep going for your baby where it gets nice and soft and passes what we call that squish test. If you push the Asparagus between your forefinger and your thumb, there should be a little bit of give there. That's an indicator that it's soft enough for your baby, and certainly when you break it in half, it shouldn't snap. It should kind of dissolve a little bit and it's kind of shreddable at that point. Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back.

Katie Ferraro (8m 19s):

Now, even before cooking it. When you are selecting Asparagus, the fatter stocks of Asparagus are actually more tender. So sometimes we think, oh, the little tiny dainty ones are gonna be super tender and soft for my baby, but not so have a lot more success starting with the big fat stalks. Also, Asparagus, like all vegetables, is a high water content food, so when you cook it, it's gonna lose some of that moisture and shrink down. We want it to still be able to cut into pieces about the size of your adult pinky finger that your baby can pick up and feed to themselves. What I'll generally do is I break the Asparagus at the bottom where the natural break is to remove the really woody part of the stock and I discard that, and then I take a vegetable peeler and I'll shave about the bottom third to half of the Asparagus to increase the tenderness.

Katie Ferraro (9m 4s):

Then I'll cut it into pieces of length about the size of my adult pinky finger. I generally, especially for early eaters, only feed the bottom part of the cooked stock to the baby. I don't like all of the different kind of the the grizzly top, which can be hard for early eaters, older babies, once you've tried a bunch of foods and you're comfortable, go for it. Feed 'em the whole thing, that's totally fine. But I like the really, really, really soft tender cooked stocks for earlier eaters. Another thing you can do is we eat Asparagus soup. A lot of times when Asparagus is in season and gets cheap, where I live in San Diego by a ton of it, it's one of the vegetables. My kids thankfully actually really love So. we do a lot of Asparagus and I have a lot and it's about to go bad. I'm like, ah, shoot. We do a cream of Asparagus soup and you can very easily make your baby a cream of Asparagus soup and practice drinking that out of an open cup.

Katie Ferraro (9m 52s):

So you would just follow any recipe that you have for soup. Use a low sodium or no sodium broth, puree it very finely in your with an immersion blender or in your blender if you're doing it with a milk product. So if you're using heavy cream or if you're using whole cows milk, just make sure your baby has been exposed to cows milk protein a number of times on its own without reaction before you try a recipe like that. But the thicker soups, you can do it from a pre-loaded spoon or you can offer it out of an open cup as a great way for your baby to practice that open cup drinking, which we wanna start around six months of age. For the open cup, I like to use the ezpz Tiny Cup. It's a two ounce cup designed for baby six to 12 months of age.

Katie Ferraro (10m 33s):

I'll put about one half to one ounce of a thick puree like a cream of Asparagus soup, and then help my baby learn how to drink out of an open cup from there, because ideally, we want your baby to be able to drink out of an open cup on their own, albeit with's spillage. By the time they turn 12 months So, we start practicing before that about five minutes after each meal. And a cream of Asparagus soup is a great way to do that. Just try to keep the sodium really low. I also will use cooked Asparagus pieces chopped up really small that I bake in two savory muffins. So if you're in my Baby Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro program under the 100 First Food section where the vegetables are under Asparagus, there's a recipe in there for savory Asparagus egg muffins.

Katie Ferraro (11m 16s):

Those are absolutely fabulous for babies. If you're interested in learning about that program and more about how to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning, I teach a free online workshop every week called Baby Led Weaning for Beginners. You can sign up for this week's workshop times and grab your copy of my original 100 First Foods list. It's all on that free online workshop. Again, it's called Baby Led Weaning for Beginners. That's at https://blwpodcast.com. So I hope you'll consider giving your baby a shot at Asparagus this week, And If. You need ideas of lots of different vegetables that your baby can Safely eat. They're all on that a hundred first foods list, and again, everybody on the free online video workshop called Baby Led Weaning for Beginners gets a copy of that a 100 First Foods list, and I also show you how to make a few other vegetables safe for early eaters to eat inside of that video training.

Katie Ferraro (12m 8s):

Again, you can sign up at https://babyledweaning.com. The shownotes page for this episode is linked up at https://blwpodcast.com/335. Thank you to our partners at AirWave Media. If you guys like podcasts that feature food and science and using your brain, check out some of the offerings from AirWave Media. We're online at https://blwpodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening. I'll see you next time.

3 (12m 40s):

Hello, friends. Bedtime can be a special time for parents and Kids to Bond, and the Sleep Tight Stories podcast can help make it even more magical. Every week, we produce original stories that transport your child to worlds of imagination and wonder while helping them drift off to sleep with ease. Each story is just the right length and features, characters and stories children love and can relate to. Plus, listening to stories before Bed has been shown to improve language skills and enhance creativity.

3 (13m 22s):

Check out sleep tight stories wherever you listen to podcasts, and add a happily ever after to your bedtime routine. Thank you.