Young Gums: Baby Food with Attitude: A Modern Mama’s Guide to Happy, Healthy Weaning

by Beth Bentley

One family, one meal. Super-easy, super-tasty weaning recipes you’ll love to eat yourself. Award-winning food blogger Beth Bentley makes weaning fun and simple with a combination of baby-led and spoon-fed nutritious, wholesome recipes that are packed full of flavor. Say goodbye to fruit-sweetened, unidentifiable purees and instead make real, delicious food that the whole family can enjoy. Focusing on just a few great ingredients, clever flavor combinations and easy cooking methods, this is food that can be scaled up easily so that the family is able to enjoy the one meal—together; a practice that will help your baby develop good eating and social habits. And even better, the majority can be made using just one hand and just one pan! Including recipes such as Rainbow Ragu, Sweet Potato Cookies, Baby Burrito Bowls, and No-roast Chicken Pot Roast, this step-by-step guide will take you from the daunting first stages of weaning right up to one year, with confidence and excitement. Including over 60 meals for both baby and mum, here are healthy, flavorsome recipes for a happy baby. Includes metric measures. 

Genres: Food

192 pages, Hardcover

Published June 28, 2018

Reviews

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Preparing myself! I won't give a rating until I've actually cooked from it a few times but there seems to be some lovely recipes in here designed for whole family including baby. I might get over the use of 'strawbs' 'mama' and 'avo'. Might.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

My 10 month old child loves meals made from recipes in this book! I feel the need to defend this book against the vitriol below even though I usually lack time to write book reviews.

I have tried recipes from different sources and authors, but this is the book I keep coming back to. Favourite recipes are the curry, salmon fishcakes, popcorn chicken, homemade teething biscuits, blueberry muffins and one-ingredient ice cream. They are tasty and delicious without salt or sugar additives, and have saved me and the husband many a time on crazy busy days. We prefer that our child try a variety of flavours and this cookbook has fulfilled that.

Disclaimer - I'm from South East Asia/Singapore and my child dislikes having porridge everyday. I guess the rough measurements such as a teacup of oats or "a splash of milk" do not bother me as this is pretty much how us Asians cook for a long time. Who has time to dig out measuring cups and such when everyone's hungry?? I also feel less anxious cooking as there's no need for utmost precision.

I have tried other cookbooks but most are centred around purees and cereal/rice/oats, which are too similar to the asian-style porridges we are told to feed babies here. This book can be a worthwhile investment for parents whose kids prefer a more babyled weaning style.

[Jade · Rating 1 out of 5]

Now that I’ve owned this for a while, and made a bunch of the recipes, I’m changing my rating to one star. Everything I’ve made, other than the banana-oat rusks has been crap.

Author uses ‘teacup’ As a unit of measuremen. wtf does this mean? Are all teacups a standard size? I know she’s trying to show that you don’t need to fuss with your measurements, but how incredibly pretentious.

[Ria · Rating 5 out of 5]

THIS BOOK HAS SAVED MY SANITY. I suspect I will have made 95% of the recipes by the end of the year, it really helped me as I got to grips with weaning. And we enjoyed our first dinner as a family indulging in the delicious chilli, so that was special. I am extremely grateful for the healthy, simple meals, and would highly recommend this for anyone with a baby. Or even anyone who wants a nice cookbook without problematic ingredients.

[Chloe Harrington · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good start of weaning book!