Homemade Baby Food: Avocado-Creamed Broccoli

I love making homemade baby food for my little guy, and I love that this recipe got him eating his broccoli!

Kids can be super picky eaters, and there’s nothing more disappointing than putting time, energy, and ingredients into a batch of homemade baby food only to have your child spit it out and refuse a second bite. I’ve definitely had my share of homemade baby food failures, but this broccoli was a definite success!

It’s super important to me that this kid grow up loving veggies. My sister and I always ate our vegetables, and I think part of that is because my pops prepared them deliciously. There were no mushy peas or canned green beans in my folks’ house. We had our veggies roasted, pan-fried, or lightly steamed, and he always used plenty of spices.

Now that Darrol is nine months old (almost 10!), he can basically eat whatever we are eating. I made this homemade baby food for him with some roasted broccoli that I was cooking for Dave’s and my supper, but I have to admit that I’ve snuck a few bites of this creamed broccoli myself, and it’s g-o-o-d!

Broccoli =/= Kale

So, I mentioned homemade baby food failures above, and there is one experience that I think I should share with you guys.

I was thrilled to discover that you can feed broccoli to your baby starting at eight months, and since kale is a cruciferous vegetable like broccoli, I assumed this one was OK, too. I was not correct.

Darrol devoured the creamed kale that I made him, but it turns out that leafy greens are a 10 month food for a couple of reasons:

1. Leafy greens can contain a lot of nitrates (who knew?), which can cause something called Blue Baby Syndrome. You’re not supposed to give homemade baby food with leafy greens until 10 months, and you shouldn’t puree leafy greens with the cooking water until your baby is something like 12 months old. That said, if you did feed your younger baby greens, don’t panic! Blue Baby Syndrome from homemade baby food is actually pretty rare. I just like to play it safe. Can you tell that I’m a first-time mom?
2. There are…er…other consequences. Let’s just say that there were many, many diaper changes the day that Darrol ate his first batch of kale.

Kale may be about a month away, but in the meantime Darrol is loving this homemade baby food broccoli!