10 Tools I Use Every Day to Simplify Feeding Babies

Katie Ferraro (1m 2s):

And a couple of years ago I made the shift away from making some of these recipes, for example, like the Mini mushroom meatloaf recipe. I used to make it in muffin tins, but I moved to the Mini loaf pan for a number of reasons. First of all, easier to clean up, but secondly, the final product of a Mini loaf pan, especially compared to like, like a big meatloaf. Like that's a lot of work when it's done. You gotta cut it all up and how are you gonna store it? The Mini loafs, when they come out, they're already very close, at least the length to the size of the food that we wanna offer to the baby. For baby led weaning, which is about the size of your adult pinky finger. Hey there, I'm Katie Ferraro, Registered Dietitian, college nutrition professor, and mom of seven specializing in baby-led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (1m 42s):

Here on the Baby-Led Weaning Made Easy podcast, I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, leading you with the confidence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby-led weaning. Hello and welcome back. Today I want to share 10 tools that I use every day in my home kitchen to simplify feeding babies. And one thing that my oldest daughter pointed out, she's like, mom, I feel like you've been cooking so much more lately. So I spend a lot of time cooking for babies and I sometimes run outta steam and energy to actually cook food for my own family. So they end up eating variations of baby-led weaning food generally with more salt and sugar added to them 'cause they're older kids now.

Katie Ferraro (2m 26s):

But I've been going through my entire 100 First Foods Daily Meal Plan and revamping all of my recipes. We're really working to try to bring food costs down to kind of streamline and standardize the ingredients. So I've been making every week five new foods for my friend Carissa's baby, baby Ezra. So maybe you're tired of me hearing me talk about Baby Ezra. I feel like it's been very top of mind because for basically 140 days, so we have a 20 week meal plan. So there's five new foods a week, but then we have like a maintenance meal plan for the weekends to reintroduce the allergenic foods. So it's basically seven days of food a week times 20 weeks. It's 140 day meal plan. It's kind of a bear, but it's been such a blast really, really getting deep inside of my own content, kind of tearing everything down, rebuilding it back up based on a lot of feedback from parents.

Katie Ferraro (3m 13s):

And as a result, I spent a ton more time cooking than I normally do. So normally each day I might cook like one hour per day working on recipes and content for my program. But at this point I'm up to like almost three hours a day. I'm also at the same time revamping my whole 100 First Foods Content Library, which is a different part of our program for families that want kind of the choose your own adventure approach. They want to pick the five foods each week that they feed their babies and they don't want to go in the same particular order as my meal plan. So we've got something for everyone, but there's a few tools that I have been like constantly washing. I'm like, oh my gosh, I use this literally every day. So that's the impetus behind this episode. I wanted to share 10 tools that I use every day to simplify feeding babies.

Katie Ferraro (3m 53s):

And my goal is to help you realize that you don't need to buy expensive kitchen equipment. I mean if you guys saw my kitchen, it's literally falling apart. We moved into our house just before the pandemic and we bought it from friends, or my parents' friends, who had gotten divorced and they had the mom told me straight up she's like, the house needs a lot of work. And I was like, I don't care. We just need the space. And now that we've been in here for a couple of years, I want nothing more than to redo my kitchen. The day of one of my babysitters was doing dishes at a piece of the granite countertop, fell off on her toes like no joke, she was fine, thank god she had good shoes on. But literally my kitchen is falling apart and don don't feel like I buy any new kitchen equipment stuff like we're just kind of operating on, you know, getting by some days is what I will say.

Katie Ferraro (4m 36s):

And you do not have to have expensive kitchen equipment. You do not have to have a fancy kitchen. You do not have to buy expensive foods for your babies to learn how to eat. You do not need to spend a lot of money in order to help your child develop a solid loving relationship with food from their first bite. So here's a couple of tools that have been working for me and I've definitely been incorporating these into a lot of the recipes and the program that I have 'cause I think they really will help you as well. So the first one, if you know me then this is not a surprise Mini loaf pan. I'm obsessed with the Mini loaf pan. I used to make a lot of fritters for baby-led weaning, which involved frying, which would only make my kitchen messier And. then I discovered the Mini loaf pan.

Katie Ferraro (5m 17s):

I'm like why am I not just baking off a lot of these little fritter like things that you can also put in muffin tins but here's my beef of muffin tins. Like let's say you're making a meatloaf, like one of the, my favorite recipes from our program is our mini mushroom meatloaf recipe. Not intended to hide mushrooms 'cause I don't think you should ever hide vegetables and food but sauteed rubbery mushrooms for early eaters do not work. But if you pulse the mushrooms and you cut it half and half with beef, which by the time we get to mushroom day in our program, babies have already had beef. I think it's a wonderful way to introduce the new food mushroom. But I don't wanna make like one big meatloaf 'cause I have to cut it all up and cut it into little pieces. If I make mini loafs, when you take the mini loaf out, it works out to be, you can cut it into pieces that are about the size of your adult pinky finger, which is the shape and the size of foods that we want to serve to babies.

Katie Ferraro (6m 7s):

Especially early on in baby-led weaning with a muffin tin which is round, there's some waste. 'cause if you cut off the edges there, the really small pieces, the baby's not gonna be able to pick that up 'cause they don't have their pinster grasp yet and you're gonna have to like throw it out or waste it. Or I end up, I do sometimes put like the tiny pieces into the bowl of the tiny spoon and put it in the baby's hand and let them eat it that way. But I'm all about the mini loaf pan because the end result ends up being closer to the final size that I want. It's less work for me to cut a mini loaf of whatever it is that I baked. For example, we just did kidney beans, so my kidney bean pie recipes, we bake them off in Mini loaf pans. You can get a mini loaf pan on Amazon an eight mini loaf pan. There's also 12 ones.

Katie Ferraro (6m 47s):

I have a large family, I cook for on average 10 people a day. So my seven kids, my husband, me and our au pair who lives with us and helps us with the kids So I have a 24 pan mini loaf pan. And I actually, some of the feedback and part of the reason why I redid all the recipes in my program is 'cause people will be like, could you please not write recipes that make like so much because I freezer is full of all this extra baby-led weaning food. Like I don't anticipate or want you guys to have to cook every single day if you can make some extra foods and store them for your baby to eat throughout the week. But I also get that like not everyone is cooking for 10 people. So I'm trying to be more normal and reasonable in the yields of my recipe. So if you search on Amazon, just look for mini loaf pan eight cavity or eight mini loafs.

Katie Ferraro (7m 31s):

The word cavity sounds so weird in that context but it's like 15 bucks and I swear to gosh, anything that you used to make in a muffin tin, start making it in the ,ini loaf pan. Your baby will love it and you'll love yourself. That's number one. Next up on the list of tools that I use every day, certainly my food processor, my life is already very cluttered. I feel like I do not like kitchen countertop appliances. I was talking about this to Amy Palanjian, I don't know if you guys follow her at yummy toddler food and we're kind of both in the same boat, like I don't want all the appliances on my counter but if there was one that you like, you have to leave it on the counter, you can never use it again. We both agree that it would be the food processor and again, I'm generally making larger volumes of food. I have a large food processor, So I use a Cuisinart food processor.

Katie Ferraro (8m 13s):

I have a 14 cup, I bought one, well actually my husband bought it like he when he was only my boyfriend and I was like who is this guy buying me kitchen stuff like that's kind of presumptuous. Like this guy thinks I'm gonna cook for him. And so for a while just outta like to spite I like didn't really use it 'cause I'm like that's weird, that's a weird thing to buy someone. And then like I used it once and I was like oh my gosh, this thing is amazing. I'm never cutting another onion, I'm never cutting celery, I'm never cutting carrots like literally anything that needs to be cut. Actually the other day one of my kids was like, do you even know how to cut stuff? You just use that all the time. I do not have the best knife skills. I will admit to that the food processor is my life saver. Now someone asked me on a podcast, I was on their cooking podcast. What do you prefer more a blender or a food processor?

Katie Ferraro (8m 57s):

Honestly I use them both probably equally, but if I only had to choose one it would probably be the food processor. I just, I think I love, I don't know. I just love the extra large food processor and I would leave it on my counter overnight is how much I love it. So, I use it a lot for, we do make a lot of fritters, we do make a lot of foods that like there's certain foods, I was just talking about the mushrooms, right? I am not going to chop up all the mushrooms to go in the mini mushroom meatloaf. So for the Mini mushroom meat loafs, not only am I gonna pulse the onions in there before I saute them, you don't even have to saute them though actually I'm gonna put the mushrooms in there and get them diced up pretty fine. Then I'm just gonna put the half a pound of ground beef in there and the egg and the seasonings in there, pulse it a couple of times and voila the batter for the meatloaf is all ready to go and I didn't really have to touch anything with my bare hands, which I kind of appreciate.

Katie Ferraro (9m 44s):

So, I think a little food processer, my mom has a super small food process and it bugs me so much because she has six kids and 20 grandkids that live here in San Diego and we routinely go over at her house and I'm like, dude mom, if you had like the big one, she's like don't buy me the big one. I like my small food processor and I watch her do like 15 batches of onions. I'm like, you could have done that in the big food processor but to each their own, I think a food processor is gonna save you a ton of time and it helps a lot to get the pieces of food really small. Now we don't offer obviously small pieces of food to the baby. We're not cutting them up small so the baby can pick them up and eat them. That's not the point. A lot of these foods when you're making these combination food recipes, so when you're starting to add multiple textures for your baby and cook or baker, fry them into something that you then will cut into pieces about the size of your adult pinky finger, saving a lot of time not having to cut that stuff up by yourself.

Katie Ferraro (10m 28s):

I think the food processor is wonderful. I do have like dietician and cooking friends who enjoy cutting things up. So maybe if that's your thing, You don't need a food processor, but I definitely need it and use it every day. Hey, we're gonna take a quick break but I'll be right back.

Katie Ferraro (12m 51s):

Number three, this one's kind of random. I should have done the normal stuff first so you guys keep listening till the end. Listen to the end, it gets really good but the third one's kind of weird. It's an electric pancake maker. A lot of products that I ended up loving for my kitchen now that I have to cook all the time, I thought were gimmicky at first. I'll give you another example. This one's not on the list but the pineapple core. I remember seeing like dude who does not know how to cut up a pineapple, like I know how to cut a pineapple and it's way cheaper for me to cut up a pineapple than to buy cut pineapple. And by the way, when you buy cut pineapple like in the tidbits, like those are not the right size for your baby to eat so you gotta cut the pineapple yourself. But then our our first au pair Julia, she was from Germany, and when my twins were doing the 100 First Foods program, she helped me a lot with that.

Katie Ferraro (13m 37s):

Like she would do all my filming. She like really liked cooking and stuff too and she saw me, I guess she saw me struggling cutting the pineapple. So she bought me a pineapple core and I was like, oh I just need to be nice and use this And. then I used it and I was like, oh my gosh, life changer. A pineapple core makes perfectly concentric pineapple rings, which you then cut right down the middle and they make these half moons that your baby can pick up and feed to themselves. It's like absolutely genius. So much like the electric pancake maker. When I registered when I got married for like kitchen stuff, which I think I've been married for 11 years, so I wanted a pancake maker. No, I wanted a Waffle maker. Sorry, I never wanted a pancake maker. When I was little my mom would make pancakes and she would burn them.

Katie Ferraro (14m 17s):

I was like, when I grew up I'm never gonna burn the pancakes. I burned pancakes all the time. The waffle maker that I bought came with pancake griddle inserts too. Like you pop the Waffle griddle inserts out and you put the pancake ones in. I use it not every day that this is maybe false advertising on this episode I probably use it every other day. I'm not making pancakes every day. We eat a lot of pancakes in our house but I also make a lot of pancakes 'cause a lot of the whole grains in the program. If families can't find like rye berries for example, then I have a variation of the recipe where I use rye flour to make these rye flour pancakes. So again, it is an easy way, especially once your baby has passed egg, that you can make these pancakes and you drop 'em into the electric pancake maker and it is freaking amazing is all I'll say.

Katie Ferraro (15m 0s):

'cause you never will like I'll get a batch going, you never burn them. It beeps when it's ready. So I'll go do something else around the kitchen, then it beeps and reminds me to come take the pancakes off and they make perfectly concentric pancakes and nobody fights about the size of their pancake. So I'll put the link to the one I use, again it's also from Cuisinart and I just get it on Amazon. Well I actually have never had to replace it 11 years later, but I probably recommended it to hundreds of people at this point and I know you might be interested in it. So there's an Amazon link in the description if you wanna check it out. Number four, an Instant Pot. I was very late to the Instant Pot game. I was like, this thing seems gimmicky, this thing seems dumb. I already have a slow cooker, I have a pressure cooker, neither of which I was ever using.

Katie Ferraro (15m 40s):

I know so many families and I know most of you listening are moms and if you're married you may have gotten an Instant Pot for your wedding and it's still in the box. So if you have an Instant Pot and you have a baby, the stars have aligned. You need to use one for the other. Use the Instant Pot for your baby. One of my favorite things to make in an Instant Pot is a whole chicken. It's literally the easiest thing in the world. This is Jenna Helwig taught me this I don't know if you guys follow her. She used to be a real baby food. I think she changed her Instagram handle name, but she was like the former food editor I think real simple magazine. She also worked for Parents magazine. She has some sort of a baby cookbook for using an Instant Pot. She calls it a multi cooker 'cause Instant Pot I think is trademarked. But basically if you have a multi cooker, which is an Instant Pot, you take a whole chicken, you put it on the rack in the Instant Pot, you put one cup of water in it, you close it, you pressure cook it on high for 30 minutes.

Katie Ferraro (16m 28s):

That's all like if you're intimidated by making a whole chicken. Guys, I'll tell you what bugs me though is buying a whole chicken costs more than buying a rotisserie chicken. You can't do rotisserie chicken for babies 'cause there's way too much sodium in there. So you gotta pay like a dollar or two extra, get the whole chicken, make it yourself. It's so freaking easy. Instant Pot is amazing. I also use my Instant Pot for things like hard-boiled eggs. The 5 5 5 rule, I don't know if you've heard this. You put the rack in the Instant Pot, put your eggs in there, pressure, cook it on high for five minutes, do five minutes of pressure release And, then put it in a bowl of ice water for five minutes. That's the third one and 15 minutes without messing it up, you've got perfect hard boiled eggs and make like I have the extra large Instant Pot and I think I can make like 15 of eggs at one time in there. So I, love the Instant Pot.

Katie Ferraro (17m 8s):

If you have it, just get it out because you will use it either from the pressure cooker, the slow cooker things even like making rice, even making yogurt. If you have Jenna Helwigs, multi cookbook for babies, again, I'll find the right title for that and put it in the description. She's got a great recipe in there for making yogurt and people will be like, why would you make yogurt? Well, yogurt's really expensive and if you start with a little bit of yogurt and you use whole milk, you can actually make your own yogurt and it's way cheaper than actually buying yogurt if you have to buy the starter yogurt. And I've tried it a lot of times, but it wasn't till I used Jenna's recipe that I actually really got yogurt down in the Instant pop. So that's number four. Number five, meat thermometer, like an $8 meat thermometer from Amazon. I love these like we have so many meat thermometers.

Katie Ferraro (17m 50s):

My husband likes to grill and then you know if you have like not to be gender stereotypical, but like a guy in your life and you don't know what to buy for, I feel like everyone just buys some grilling stuff like Father's Day rolls around and gets like a ton of grilling stuff. I'm like, great, we have all of these thermometers that have like probes and bluetooth and you need to plug in or they have a charger. I'm like, why can I please just have an analog $8 meat thermometer from Amazon? It's the best thing ever because it really is important, especially when you're making meats for your baby that you're cooking them to the proper internal cooking temperature. I was just working on this beef chuck roast recipe that we have inside of the program. It has lemongrass and it's really flavorful, super affordable to make, but it's very important that it cooks to the proper internal cooking temperature and you can't eyeball that.

Katie Ferraro (18m 31s):

You need to confirm it. So just get an $8 analog meat thermometer off of Amazon. They're amazing. So the first five mini loaf pan, food processor, electric pancake maker, Instant Pot, meat thermometer, those are kinda like traditional kitchen tools. The next five are kind of baby specific. So once I get the food cooked, then what is helping to kind of streamline helping the baby have success at the table becoming an independent eater? The first one is the ezpz first foods set. I know a lot of parents get overwhelmed by baby gear and I am not an advocate for buying a bunch of junky you'll never need, you do need a suction mat or bowl if you're doing baby-led weaning, we don't offer food right off of the table or right off of the tray. Then I'll share an article that I wrote all about the benefits of using a suction mat or bowll and why it really does promote independent eating.

Katie Ferraro (19m 15s):

If you're not sure what baby gear to buy and you're just starting out the ezpz first food set is amazing. It is one of their tiny bowls. So that's a five ounce portion, okay, it's small. I use it for like trying new purees. We don't put the puree in the baby's mouth right? We teach how to use the preloaded spoon approach and the first food set not only comes with one of the tiny bowls, it comes with two of the ezpz tiny spoons and one of their tiny cups. So they're feeding expert at ezpz Dawn Winkelmann. She designed all of these products, they're developmentally appropriate for your baby and they really help promote independent eating. So if you get the first food set, you get the two pack of the tiny spoons, you get the tiny cup and you get the tiny bowl, that's the first thing that you'll need in order to help your baby, you know, start learning how to dip and scoop using their spoon.

Katie Ferraro (19m 59s):

That comes a little bit later. We use the preloaded spoon first, but starting around six months of age, they also can start practice drinking out of an open cup and since we don't wanna put the food directly on the table or the tray, having that suction bowl with that pliable silicone barrier, these are all a hundred percent food grade silicone products. You can throw 'em in your dishwasher. They're incredibly durable. They'll last you for years. I have some of these products that I've had now for almost I think nine years and they look as good and perform as good as the day that they were new. So number seven is the ezpz Mini Mat. It's a three compartment Mat. So starting in day three of baby-led weaning, we start offering in the second half of a meal a traditional plate that has three foods. So the way I kind of structure the meals in my baby-led weaning program is for the first 10 minutes of the meal we try the new food of the day on its own and I usually will do that either out of the tiny bowl or the easy peasy Mini Bowl, So that new food of the day on its own.

Katie Ferraro (20m 49s):

I'll give you the example of what food am I making today for a baby. Oh, we're doing coconut, so coconut rice pudding recipes. So the coconut rice pudding, I'll put in the tiny bowl, I'll put it give with the tiny spoon. So I'm working with a baby who's seven months of age now offering the preloaded spoon, giving the baby that rice pudding for 10 minutes and it's a coconut rice pudding. There's no added sugar in it of course, and it's using full fat coconut milk and unsweetened coconut threads as the way to introduce your baby to the new food coconut. So I'll do that for the first 10 minutes, and then the second 10 minutes of the meal, I'll swap in and bring in an easy peasy Mini Mat that three compartment mat and I'll put the new food of the day, which is that coconut rice pudding there. So that's the second exposure for that baby, and then in the two smaller portion pockets, the Mini Mat has a four ounce portion pocket.

Katie Ferraro (21m 33s):

It kind of looks like a smile. So the mouth part, the smile part is four ounces, and then the two eye sockets are two two ounce portions and so in the smaller eye socket portions I'll put a small serving of fruit or vegetable. And then a small serving of protein and those are from previous days. So there's two familiar foods going onto the plate plus one new food from the day that coconut rice pudding. Okay, and so then for the second 10 minutes of the meal, the baby will eat out of the Mini Mat, they're getting a second exposure to the new food plus re-introduction of what are now familiar foods from previous days. So that ezpz Mini Mat, that's like the original silicone suction mat. I absolutely love that product. Starting in day three of baby-led weaning because we're starting to kind of roll into this building a whole balanced baby-led weaning plate because your baby doesn't just eat the new food of the day.

Katie Ferraro (22m 19s):

We also need to be incorporating the familiar foods from previous days. The Mini Mat really kind of helps set the stage for that. So all of the ezpz products, if you want to check them out, my affiliate discount code KATIE10 works for 10% off at ezpzfun.com. I recommend the first food set and the Mini Mat products. Eight and nine are both from the same company called BAPRON Baby. I know a lot of you guys are interested in minimizing the mess. Baby-led weaning is messy. Learning how to eat is a messy experience. It is a full sensory experience and getting messy and smushing and smashing and sniffing and putting the food in their hair. That's actually all part of the full sensory experience that is learning how to eat. And while I know a lot of you may be frustrated by the mess, it is an important foundational concept for your baby to be able to touch the food, to feel the food.

Katie Ferraro (23m 3s):

Again, incorporating all of those senses. I just did a whole episode on incorporating your baby's five senses when starting solid foods and I was surprised 'cause I didn't think people would be that interested in it, but the downloads are really high on that episode, so I'll share that one again. I think it's just kind of like easing parents' fear, especially if you're type A, like I'm Type A, I don't like a mess, but at the end of the day I do want my child to learn how to eat food by themselves and like all the foods that I'm making, so, I need to let them get messy in the meantime. My goal is not to prevent the mess, but my goal is to minimize the mess. So I have two tools that I use from the company Bapron Baby. The first one is what's called the Bapron Bib. So that is a bib for baby-led weaning. A Bapron is a hybrid between an apron and a Bib.

Katie Ferraro (23m 43s):

It's designed by Kelsey Larsen, she's the founder of Bapron Baby. It's a mom-owned company based out of Arizona. Kelsey uses this amazing waterproof fabric to make the bibs. I love them because they're not full coverage when sometimes you hear full coverage bibs and those are bibs that that are long sleeve. These kind of like tent like contraptions, which I do not like because they severely restrict and limit your baby's range of motion. I don't like the heavy silicone bibs that can weigh up to a pound and really weigh your baby's neck down when they're eating. I don't like the bibs with the trough because they act as a barrier. The baby can't get all the way up to the table because that the trough there is bumping against the table or their tray. So I want your baby to have free range of motion. So I like a really lightweight bib. I like that the Bapron bibs are purposely sleeveless again.

Katie Ferraro (24m 24s):

So your baby has that full range of motion but they tie in the back underneath your baby's collarbone. So then it's not that uncomfortable sensory experience where it's tying up in their neck like some of the other traditional bibs do. Not to mention that when your baby gets a little bit older they just rip those bibs right off but with the Bapron baby they can't get it off. And I'd love the waterproof material that Kelsey makes her products out of. The bibs a little bit onn the pricier side, it's around $20 but it's totally worth it to buy one $20 bib than to have to buy like 15 $5 bibs that are gonna get destroyed in the washing machine or that gonna disintegrate they're not made out of the best quality. The waterproof material Kelsey uses, it's so magical because after each meal you can just rinse the Bapron Bib under your faucet, hang it on your drain board, And, then it's ready to go for the next meal.

Katie Ferraro (25m 7s):

She sent me a bunch of these when my quadruplets were doing baby-led weaning and it's like, you know they get to the point where they're eating three meals a day times four babies. Like I'm sorry don't wanna buy 12 bibs. I don't wanna have to wash 12 bibs a day. I had four bibs and I would just wash them in the sink in my kitchen and hang them on the drain board and they would dry quickly and be ready for the next meal. Hey, we're gonna take a quick break but I'll be right back.

Katie Ferraro (26m 7s):

The ninth product on my list is also from Bapron and it's their splash mat. So this is a large piece of the same waterproof material that she makes the bibs out of that goes underneath your highchair and I love the Bapron baby splash mats. They are clean so you put 'em underneath the highchair and then if your baby drops the food, especially at the beginning, they drop quite a lot of food 'cause they're still learning what to do with it. You can pick it up from the clean Splash Mat and recycle it back up onto the baby's mat or their bowl helping in that way to reduce food waste. I also use them for traveling or eating on the go because the material packs up really, really small. Like I feel like I've tried every single splash mat out there and some of them are really cool but they're like so super heavy that you would like never carry them around.

Katie Ferraro (26m 49s):

Like they're great for being in your house if you never have to pick them up. But the splash mats from Bapron are so lightweight you just fold it all up, put it right back in your diaper bag if you're out at grandma's house or the park or whatever, you also can just toss it right into your washing machine. I have a black one that you probably see in a lot of my pictures and videos that I've had for eight years at this point. I wash it in the washing machine a couple times a week and again it's as good as the day that I got it. So I'm into buying a product that's gonna last you for a while and sometimes I'll when families are like starting baby-led weaning with their second baby and like, okay, what do you need? What in the, no, I already have a splash Mat from the last baby. I have bibs from the last baby. It's like you can reuse these things for your subsequent babies, which is nice. Alright, number 10 on the list.

Katie Ferraro (27m 30s):

Also speaking to those of you who are stressed about the mess, something that I use every day to simplify feeding Babies is more about cleaning up after the mess and that is having a good quality non-toxic household cleaner, okay, the mess is an issue, I know that, but I also know that cleaning up the wet food mess as soon as that meal is done is tantamount to my sanity, right? Like I cannot deal with dry food mess. I did it the other day. Baby Ezra was over and we were doing tahini. So that was his ninth allergenic food. So on week nine we were doing this thinned out tahini recipe and they left and like something distracted me or my other kids came home and then like two hours later I went over to the table where the baby had been and it was like freaking cement all over the table and I was like, oh, if I had only cleaned this up two hours ago.

Katie Ferraro (28m 19s):

So I use a brand of household cleaners called Branch Basics and I love Branch Basics. I've had their founders on my podcast, I've been on their podcasts. I like their products because they actually get the baby-led weaning mess out. So I never recommend a product that I don't personally use in my own home. Both in my nutrition feeding practice for Babies and with my own seven kids. The branch basics are amazing. They use the same non-toxic soap concentrate to make like six or seven different household cleaners. So there's a glass cleaner, there's a hand soap that we use a lot, they have an all-purpose cleaner, a bathroom cleaner. They're just different levels of concentration. I kind of use the bathroom cleaner, which is the heaviest one on my baby-led weaning food mess. But I love that these products not only smell good, okay, without all of the chemicals, but they actually get the mess out.

Katie Ferraro (29m 0s):

And so if you wanna check out branch basics, they have a starter kit so you can get like glass bottles or plastic bottles. We're really trying to use less plastic in our house, but I was a little nervous about glass bottles. However, I've gotten their glass bottle starter set a number of times for like different friends. I got my mom, I've got my sister hooked. They have bumpers on the glass bottle. So even if your kids drop them on the floor, they don't break. I've never broken a Branch Basics glass bottle. And now my kids like they love to fill up. You use your your own water at your own house. So you can use like distilled, you can use regular water. I found especially the glass cleaner works better with like the filtered water that we drink out. We use from our drinking fountain filtered water. Then you put a little bit of the soap concentrate in it. That's the other thing, like I was buying Windex for years, it's like like five bucks a bottle.

Katie Ferraro (29m 41s):

When you make the glass cleaner from branch basics, you fill it up 99.99% of water from your own house and then you put like two drops of the concentrate in it and that's what's in the glass cleaner. And I was like, it ends up being way cheaper, not to mention better for the environment, better for the removal of toxins from your house and they actually get stuff clean. So if you wanna get the starter kits, my affiliate code KATIE15 works for, I think that's 15% off of the starter kits at branchbasics.com. So I'll link up all the products one more time. The 10 things that are really saving my you know what in the kitchen, I'll go backwards, Branch Basics nontoxic household cleaners, Bapron baby splash mats, Bapron baby bibs. If you wanna check out the Bapron Baby products, if you go to bapronbaby.com for the bibs and the splash mats, my code KATIE10 works there, but they're also on the ezpz site and that same code KATIE10 works there.

Katie Ferraro (30m 30s):

If you wanna like consolidate your ezpz order with some of the bibs and the splash mats, KATIE10 is the code. I like the easy peasy Mini Mat. That's the three compartment suction mat. I like the easy-peasy first food set. That's the one that has the bowl, two spoons, and a cup. You need a meat thermometer. Get the $8 one off of Amazon. An Instant Pot, if you already have one get it out. If you don't love cooking and you're like, Ugh, I don't wanna buy a lot of stuff for my kitchen then get an Instant Pot because it is so versatile and will serve you well beyond the baby phase as well. The electric pancake maker. It feels a little luxury, but trust me, if you make waffles and pancakes, you're gonna love this thing, mines from Cuisinart. Food processor, also Cuisinart. And then the mini loaf pan, just the eight tin. Or if you're feeling spicy and wanna triple all of these batches, you can get the 24 mini loaf pan off of Amazon.

Katie Ferraro (31m 15s):

I'll link it all up in the description and in the Shownotes for this episode, which you can find at BLWpodcast.com/385. Thank you so much 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 podcasts from AirWave. We're online at BLW podcast.com. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time. If you're interested in doing baby-led weaning, but you're not exactly sure, like what does that mean? What does it look like? Where do I start? My online program called Baby-led Weaning with Katie Ferraro has everything you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods and get them to eat over a 100 foods before they turn one.

Katie Ferraro (31m 59s):

Whether you're terrified of choking or maybe you've started but you feel like you're feeding your baby the same foods over and over 'cause you don't know what to feed next or you're looking for guidance on how to prepare foods safely for your baby's age and stage. My program has exactly what you need. There's five hours of concise self-paced video training. You can knock this thing out during nap time this week. You also get access to my hundred first foods content library so you can see and learn exactly how to prep all of the 100 foods as well as my original 100 days meal plan. I've been refining this program for the last seven years. Just today, a mom wrote to me and told me that the a 100 days meal plan has been a game changer for her busy lifestyle. When you join the program, you also get access to over a 100 phase two combination food recipes.

Katie Ferraro (32m 40s):

So you're gonna try out the trickier textures, push your baby's palate, and what's cool about these recipes is your whole family will enjoy them. So everything you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods is inside of the program. It's created by me, a Registered Dietitian who specializes in infant feeding. If you're tired of hunting and pecking around the internet trying to piece this stuff together on your own, I put it all in one convenient place for you. I invite you to check out the Baby-Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro program that's at babyledweaning.co again, that website is babyledweaning.co and click on program to learn more.