What is your baby’s nutrition worth to you?

Today’s guest post comes to us from Emma Claire at CookNovel who writes about baby food recipes so that you can make your baby food right at home.

When our children were little (today, at the time of this post they are 8, 6 and 3 respectively), we used the BEABA Babycook steam cooker/blender to make our baby food. We put the food in ice cube trays and put them in the freezer and pulled them out when we needed them.

Making food for our children without preservatives and all of the extras of store-bought food off of the shelf helped us feel good about what our children ate while growing at such critical stages in their brain development. Even to this day, we only buy Horizon brand organic milk with DHA labeled on the container.

The nutrition our children receive is one of the most important decisions a parent can make. We hope you can use some of these recipes for your own little ones. Thanks for the great article, Emma.

Enjoy.
– Will

5 Delicious wholesome homemade baby food recipes for your baby

When it comes to your baby, there’s no such thing as “trying too hard”, particularly when it comes to their food.

Cooking your baby’s food at home might take some extra time, which can be a problem for busy parents but there are several good reasons why you should consider homemade and wholesome baby food.

1. Since you’re the one that makes the food, you’ll know exactly what your baby is eating, down to the last ingredient. No preservatives, no colorants, no extra sugar. Just want you chose to eat.
2. It can be more affordable. This is not always the case but high-quality, organic, pre-packaged baby food tends to be pretty expensive. Luckily, making your own baby food can help you cut on the costs.
3. You can personalize your baby’s food based on what they like. This can help you gradually introduce new things in their diets, take out the foods they don’t like and eliminate any allergy risks.
4. You can share your food with your baby by making their food with similar ingredients as the one you used for your family’s dinner, saving time and money!

Now that you know why making your baby’s food at home is so convenient, it’s time to look at some of the most wholesome baby food recipes out there so you can make sure you’re giving your baby nothing but the best!

Delicious apple, oatmeal and pumpkin baby food

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Ingredients:

½ cup of unsweetened apple sauce.
½ cup of pumpkin, pureed.
1 ½ cup of cooked rolled oats. (Unsweetened)

Cinnamon, ginger or nutmeg to taste. (Remember not to use too much as to not to overwhelm your baby’s palate)

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Instructions:

Step 1: Mix the unsweetened applesauce, pureed pumpkin and the cooked oatmeal together.
Step 2: Gradually add the cinnamon, nutmeg or ginger and taste it. Add more spices if necessary.
Step 3: Stir everything until perfectly mixed and blend if necessary.

This recipe is fantastic for babies aged 6-8 months.

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Creamed peas and nuggets

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Ingredients:

4 cups of peas, preferably fresh.
1 cup of whole milk
2 tbsp. of flour
2 tbsp. of butter
Chicken

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Instructions:

Step 1: In a sauce pan, mix the flour with melted butter. Cook no longer than a minute.
Step 2: Add the milk and mix as you do it to prevent any lumps.
Step 3: Add salt and pepper to taste. You can also add other spices if you feel it’s appropriate.
Step 4: Cook while stirring until the mix starts to thicken.
Step 5: Add the peas and cook them for about five minutes or until they’re heated through.
Step 6: Add chicken

Since this recipe has dairy consult with your pediatrician before introducing it to your baby’s diet.

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Squash and rice puree

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Ingredients:

1 cup of mashed butternut squash
½ cup of fresh water
¼ cup of rice of your choosing.
Yogurt (optional)

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Instructions:

Step 1: Using a blender or a food processor mix your mashed squash and the water. Slowly integrate the rice until perfectly blended.
Step 2: If your baby doesn’t like the consistency add more water to thin it or, if your baby can eat dairy, add yogurt to thicken it.

This recipe is perfect for babies 8 months old or more!

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Banana Avocado Baby Food

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Ingredients:

1 ripe avocado
1 ripe banana

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Instructions:

Step 1: Peel and de-pit your avocado
Step 2: Remove the avocado meat and mash it with a food masher or a fork.
Step 3: Peel your banana and mash it with a food masher or a fork.
Step 4: Blend everything together in a food processor or a blender until you reach the desired consistency.

This recipe is perfect for babies between 6 – 4 months and it doesn’t need to be cooked so you can make it in a pinch.

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Sweet potato soup

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Ingredients:

1 ½ cups of sweet potatoes, cooked.
1 tbsp. of flour
1 tbsp. of butter
1 ½ cups of chicken broth
¼ tsp. ground ginger
¼ tsp. ground nutmeg
1 cup of whole milk

You can use cinnamon instead or nutmeg or, if you prefer it, you can also use 1/8 of nutmeg and 1/8 of ginger for extra flavor.

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Instructions:

Step 1: Melt the butter and mix it with the flour in a saucepan. Mix until it acquires a caramel-like color.
Step 2: Slowly add the broth while mixing the entire way to prevent any lumps. Keep the soup simmering and slowly stir in the potatoes and whatever spices you chose.
Step 3: Cook for 5 minutes.
Step 4: Mix using a food processor or a blender (Top 5 best personal blenders for smoothies). Add the milk when you serve the baby food.

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Storing homemade baby food

If there’s a downside to homemade baby food is the fact that it doesn’t keep as long as pre-packed food.

There are two ways you can store baby food, in the freezer or the fridge.

Fridge

You can store your homemade baby food in the fridge for up to 48 hours, as long as you keep it in an airtight container.

Freezer

You can also freeze your baby food so it lasts from 1-3 months.

The best way of doing this is not adding liquids (such as milk or broth) to the food until it’s time to eat it:

• Puree the base of your baby food and freeze it in ice cube trays.
• Take out only the baby food cubes you’ll need. (1 cube is optimal for young babies)
• Thaw the pureed baby food and integrate the liquids
• Reheat and serve

What do you think of these recipes?

Do you know any others that you think need to be included in this list? Do you have any doubts? Questions? Suggestions? Want to let us know if your baby liked the food? Let us know in the comments and don’t forget to share with your friends and family if you found this article useful.

Thanks for reading!

About the Guest Post Author

I’m Emma, founder of CookNovel blog, and I’m absolutely in love with food blogs. I’d like to share the interesting recipes, food tips and top lists of kitchen gadgets. I’m a foodie at heart but being the mother of 3 kids, it’s not always easy to keep up with fancy dinners… so I rely on the support of other blogging moms like me to help along the way.

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The Summit’s Pink Pumpkin Festival & Sidewalk Sale

Farmers Market, sales and activities support breast cancer awareness

Our friends over at The Summit shared some great information with us here at Windy Pinwheel about a great fall event happening this Saturday to support the effort to find a cure for breast cancer. As October is nationally known as Breast Cancer Awareness Month, this is a great cause to get behind. Please come out and support this event this weekend and be sure to spread the word to everyone you know.

The Summit and Renown Children’s Hospital invite families to come out for a day full of autumn harvest fun on Saturday, Oct. 4, 2014 from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM in the center plaza. The Pink Pumpkin Festival and Sidewalk Sale will support breast cancer awareness and will benefit the Renown Health Breast Cancer Patient Assistance Fund. The event is free and open to the public. Donations for breast cancer patient assistance are encouraged.

Event activities that day will include a sidewalk sale, live entertainment, fall farmers market vendors, pink Porcelain Doll pumpkins for sale, face painting, activities for children, health information booths, contests and recyclable bag/gift card giveaways.

Participants can enjoy food and drinks from various vendors at the market, which will feature fresh, local fall produce including grapes, apples, corn, potatoes, garlic, onions, squash, eggs, local honey and more. Also, all guests can enter to win prizes from The Summit, Renown Health and the farmers market.

The pink pumpkin patch, sponsored by Moana Nursery, will feature decorative gourds and pumpkins, including the popular Porcelain Doll pumpkins. Moana Nursery has partnered with The Pink Pumpkin Patch Foundation, an organization created in 2012, to aid in the fight against breast cancer. A percentage of proceeds from every pink pumpkin sold this year will go towards organizations involved in breast cancer research.

In conjunction with the event, The Summit will also host its first-ever, center-wide Sidewalk Sale. From 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., shoppers will enjoy the one-day, one-time only sale where exclusive retailers will display racks with sale items in front of their stores. The sidewalk sale will also feature stores including but not limited to Ann Taylor, Claire’s, GAP, Old Navy, Orvis and Talbots.

“This event and sidewalk sale are designed to kick-off breast cancer awareness month in Reno,” said Dan Davis, marketing manager at The Summit. “Many stores and restaurants will provide special pink products and offers, as well as showcase sale items from the Summer. My hope is those interested in spreading awareness will find that perfect ‘pink’ item to wear or display throughout the entire month.”

Benefitting from much of the event activities, the Renown Health Breast Cancer Patient Assistance Fund helps to ease the financial and emotional burden on uninsured and under-insured breast cancer patients throughout northern Nevada.

“Our patient assistance funds benefit those in our area who are battling cancer while struggling with financial hardships,” Joel Muller, vice president of the Renown Health Foundation, said. “These dollars help to cover desperately needed prescription, care and travel expenses for our patients. Renown Health is grateful to The Summit for its help and to be a part of this event once again this year.”

October is “Go Pink” month at The Summit.

Go Pink at your favorite stores and restaurants in October! Join The Summit and Renown Health Breast Cancer Patient Assistance Fund in a month-long celebration of hope, strength and survival. Plus, for every Facebook “Like” for The Summit during the month of October, The Summit will donate $1 to the Renown Health Breast Cancer Patient Assistance Fund, up to a total of $1,000 and each “Like” must be a new “Like” to be counted.

Garden of Hope in the Pink Plaza throughout the month of October

Write a message of hope, love and healing to honor someone you know touched by breast cancer. Then tie your note to the branches of the plants and trees in the Garden of Hope located in the Plaza between Vans and Tilly’s. Visit the garden throughout October for reflection or encouragement. Sponsored by Moana Nursery.

For more information regarding events happening at The Summit, please visit TheSummitonline.com/Reno

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Stop by Meadowood Mall in the next two weeks and make a donation to support local schools and students in Washoe County.

Chelsey Allodi with curator :, a marketing firm representing Meadowood Mall, wrote us recently and shared some great news with us here at Windy Pinwheel. We are always in favor of helping out our local community and found this event at Meadowood Mall worth sharing. We hope you can stop by and join in.

Over the next two weekends Meadowood Mall will be celebrating the property’s grand reopening. Now that the mall has finished major renovations, they are celebrating with an variety of family-friendly events and back-to-school festivities and events.

In honor of the back-to-school season, Meadowood Mall and Bill Pearce Courtesy Honda are teaming up to help local kids in need. Kicking off on Saturday, August 17, shoppers and event attendees are invited to help to fill a Honda Odyssey with school supplies. Those interested in donating supplies are welcome to drop off donations at the vehicle, located in Center Court at Meadowood Mall, between August 17 and August 21.

Pedro Martinez, superintendent of the Washoe County School District, will also be at the event Saturday, August 17 to help kickoff the donation campaign and to accept a $500 check from Meadowood Mall on behalf of the Washoe County School District. The monetary donation along with the donated school supplies will go where they are needed most, to the schools and children in our community. Those who participate will receive swag bags from Meadowood Mall containing a Meadowood Mall bag, notebook and pen set, bottled water, chocolates and in-store coupons.

Here’s a schedule of all the fun that is happening:

• Free eye screenings at Visionworks
• Craft-making activities and games, including decorating notebooks and bookmarks for school
• Live entertainment, featuring Rappin’ Ratz.
• A bounce house, face painters and more!

Event attendees will have the chance to win prizes and giveaways and tackle their back to school shopping lists with exclusive retailer coupons

Want to treat your taste buds? Take a stroll through the beautiful new food court for a Taste of Meadowood. Try the tasty free samples being handed out by our variety of food court vendors, including:

• Sbarro’s
• Ruby Thai
• Le Crepe
• Charlie Grilled Subs
• What the Pho
• And many more!

We’re thrilled to show off our newly transformed Center Court and Food Court with its first ever event since the renovation completed, and we hope you’ll be able to come see it for yourself at one or both of the events! Please write Chelsey Allodi if you have any questions about either event or the school supplies donation campaign at Meadowood Mall.

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By sponsoring this article, your sponsorship will display for a period of 180 days (6 months). If, for any reason, and it is up to the discretion of the authors of Windy Pinwheel, we feel content linked to or the name provided does not coincide with the objectives of this site for our audience we will issue a refund and pull the sponsorship of the article. This action does not limit you from sponsoring an article on our site again. However, by sponsoring again, we will issue the same review criteria as the prior sponsorship and if it fails, we will follow the same process as before and issue a refund and pull down the sponsorship. We truly appreciate the support of our audience and hope you can help offset our costs of operating this site by sponsoring our site articles.

For all reviews, please exercise discretion. If the sponsor of the article is in conflict of the topic of the article, we will pull down the sponsorship to remove any conflict of interest with the article at-hand. For instance, there is an article about a hamburger restaurant and a competing hamburger restaurant sponsors the article; we will pull the sponsorship and issue a refund.

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“Arrgh, arrgh, arrgh!” – Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor, a Home Improvement television sitcom character played by Tim Allen

With Summer and Father’s Day right around the corner, we thought we would hold a giveaway celebrating all that is man, manly, and neanderthal by hosting a giveaway as a part of the Backyard BBQ Giveaway Hop hosted by Review Wire Media

For the Backyard BBQ Giveaway Hop, we decided to offer up the Weber 6630 Original 3-Piece Stainless Steel Tool Set to one lucky winner. Besides, any outdoor man’s man needs a good set of barbecue tongs, a spatula and a fork for grilling the world’s best meats and vegetables for his family#Besides, any tetosterone-laden man’s man needs a good set of barbecue tongs, a spatula and fork to grill the world’s tastiest foods set to fire expressing domination over nature, bi-winning at the hands of someone infused with tiger blood mixed with Adonis DNA in taming the wild fires of all creation. The unique front end soft-touch handle offers comfortable, non-slip grip for all the metro-sexual men out there as well. The tong handle locks for compact storage and the spatula has an angled neck to reach over the edge of any grill, keeping your hands and arms away from heat. Finally, the fork tines are designed to pierce food without shredding it. But hey, if you like shredded meat, that’s your perogative as a man, right?

Does that sound like what a man can handle? “Arrgh, arrgh, arrgh!”

We thought so.

With Father’s day and Summer right around the corner, who couldn’t use a set of grilling tools to lend you some assistance in creating a meal equivalent to your masterpiece, your magnum opus, or pièce de résistance, if you will, for the entire family to enjoy.

Please sign up below to win this set absolutely perfect for any man’s man (ahem, or woman) to use to dominate the grill for all-time. Hurry, you have until June 18, 2013 9:00 PM PDT / 12:00 AM EDT to enter.

Be a man and sign up to win today!

*Contest is available to entries from the United States and Canada only.

All participating bloggers are offering a prize to help kick off the grilling season. After you enter all the sizzling giveaways, make sure to stop by The Review Wire to enter the Grand Prize! 80s Tees and Little Tikes will be sponsoring the Grand Prize. This hop will run from June 4-18. Get your grill on!

Disclosure: Windy Pinwheel is not responsible for sponsor prize shipment.

Companies and bloggers, if you would like to participate in group giveaway events like this one, sign up to be emailed about future events hosted by The Review Wire.

History, fun, art, and “Belly Flops”. Jelly Belly factory tours offer much more than a mouthful of jelly beans.

Who doesn’t like a good Jelly Bean? Even President Ronald Regan loved jelly beans, especially Jelly Belly’s. Located in Fairfield, CA, the Jelly Belly Factory is a working candy factory, open for free tours. On a recent trip to visit family in the Napa, California area, we stopped and met up with my cousin and grandmother, who I call, “Nana” to take the kids on a tour of the factory. I’m not sure who was more excited, my Nana or my son.

We arrived at the factory in the early afternoon to a large parking lot with great signage to help you find your way leads you to the front doors. When we first walked in, we were greeted by an employee conducting taste tests on the latest flavor (Tobassco Sauce). My kids and I declined that flavor. My Nana gave it a try and it was definitely HOT! We checked in for the tour and were told to head over to the “tasting bar” to get some samples of any of the flavors we wanted. Check out their list of flavors.

After trying a few yummy Jelly Belly’s, we were ushered upstairs to begin our tour. We started in the “portrait gallery” where portraits of various famous people were created using Jelly Belly’s. It’s honestly quite a sight to see. Our tour guide gave us some instructions to refrain from taking photos on the tour, hence, the scarcity of pics to accompany this article. We were also given some nifty hats and instructed to keep them on during the tour. Surprisingly, the kids actually did keep them on.

After a few quick instructions from the tour guide and a group photo (available for purchase at the end of the tour), we were off. We were there on a “production day”, which means we saw a lot of Jelly Belly in the making. We could also smell the various flavors. Since Jelly Belly uses natural ingredients for the majority of their beans (including real chocolate for the Cocoa flavor!), it tickled our sense of smell to just be there on the tour.

The tour begins with a bit of history of the family who started Jelly Belly and about Jelly Belly becoming a favorite of President Reagan when he was still Governor Reagan of California. We also found out that Jelly Belly created a new flavor of Jelly Belly jelly bean for his inauguration in order to have a Red, White and Blue variety.

After the history lesson, we got to explore the stages of Jelly Belly creation and see the workers and machines in the factory in action. Along the way, the tour guide handed out samples at that stage in production that we were learning about.

Overall, the tour took about 40 minutes. I do not think the kids entirely understood what was going on, but it was nice that it was a production day so that we could witness the creation of Jelly Belly jelly beans. If no one was working on the factory floor, the tour might have been a little boring for kids.

Once we finished the tour, we were handed a decent-sized bag with a variety of flavors of Jelly Belly’s and ended in the gift shop. Halloween was around the corner the day we visited, so I found the prepackaged bags to give away to trick-or-treaters and let the kids explore the various items in the gift shop.

My impression of the Jelly Belly factory is that it’s a great stop on the way to the Bay Area or on the way home from the Bay Area, especially if you can go on a “production day”. Jelly Belly’s are, in my opinion, the best Jelly Beans money can buy, so it’s worth the stop to learn more about why they are so yummy. I personally appreciate them so much more now after visiting the factory.

Where: Head west on I-80 towards San Francisco. Take the West Texas Street Exit in Fairfield, CA. The factory is about 3-3.5 hours from Reno.

What: Jelly Belly Factory Tour.

Need to know: Production days are typically only week days and may be closed on some holidays. Check out their website for a detailed calendar.

Extra Extra: Did you know that Jelly Belly doesn’t just make Jelly Beans! We were surprised to find out they make several other kinds of candy, including fudge. Website/Contact Information: Jellybelly.com

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By sponsoring this article, your sponsorship will display for a period of 180 days (6 months). If, for any reason, and it is up to the discretion of the authors of Windy Pinwheel, we feel content linked to or the name provided does not coincide with the objectives of this site for our audience we will issue a refund and pull the sponsorship of the article. This action does not limit you from sponsoring an article on our site again. However, by sponsoring again, we will issue the same review criteria as the prior sponsorship and if it fails, we will follow the same process as before and issue a refund and pull down the sponsorship. We truly appreciate the support of our audience and hope you can help offset our costs of operating this site by sponsoring our site articles.

For all reviews, please exercise discretion. If the sponsor of the article is in conflict of the topic of the article, we will pull down the sponsorship to remove any conflict of interest with the article at-hand. For instance, there is an article about a hamburger restaurant and a competing hamburger restaurant sponsors the article; we will pull the sponsorship and issue a refund.

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