Book Review

Super Baby Food
by Ruth Yaron
Review by Shayla Roberts

I cannot say enough how much I like this book! In short, it is almost 600 pages of everything you have ever wanted to know about preparing your own vegetarian baby food, along with chapters on nutrition, making baby-safe household cleaning products and pest repellant, frugal home and craft tips, growing your own herbs, and more. There are also hundreds of vegetarian (and many vegan) recipes. The staple of the Super Baby Food diet is Super Porridge. Yaron describes how to grind the grains (and later legumes) in your blender to make a quick-cooking whole grain cereal. To this you can add your child's favorite fruits and vegetables and/or sweeteners (she recommends blackstrap molasses and pure maple syrup for the iron). The book urges you to use your imagination, try different combinations of grains and beans for a more varied, thus, more healthy diet.

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My favorite feature is the chapter on fruits and veggies. I use this all the time. It gives nutritional facts for each one in an easy alphabetical format, along with recommended ages for its introduction into a baby's diet. There are also directions for choosing, preparing and storing each fruit and vegetable.

If I had any complaint whatsoever, it would be that Super Baby Food isn't completely vegan. I admit that it bothers me to see her recommending an egg yolk or two each week and cow's milk once they hit a year of age. To be fair, Yaron also gives several recipes for vegetable and nut milks,which are wonderful!

I still would have to recommend this book for anyone raising a vegan or vegetarian child. My son would probably be a Gerber baby if not for it. The nutritional information really gave my husband and I (omnivores until after the baby was born) the confidence we need to raise a vegan family smack in the middle of cattle country. We now are the proud parents of a vegan Super Baby!

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Shayla Roberts is a stay-at-home, AP mom to Holden. Her husband, Boyd, is an operator for Michelin. They live in Oklahoma.

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