Baby Food: Chicken with Pears and Carrot

Here's what I've learned through the process of ensuring my babies are good eaters: if I like it, they'll like it. In other words, babies have real taste buds. Did that ever occur to you? Because honestly it didn't to me.  I often think of my babies as just cute little blobs. But it turns out that they like good flavorful food, and also their feet get cold.  I learned this after months of taking them out of the house barefoot.

So I've been focused on making my baby food so delicious that I would eat it.  Of course I would never choose to eat pureed chicken, but if I can get past the texture - I have to be sure that I would enjoy it. And y'all, this was a HIT. And I'm telling you this because it's not that easy to get babies to eat chicken or other meats at a young age. Why would you want chicken when you can have sweet things like bananas and peaches and yogurt? But this - thanks to the added sweetness from the pears and carrot - was a great way to get them to chow down on some protein-heavy chicken.

Recipe

• ~1 1/4 lb boneless skinless chicken thighs or breasts
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 3 ripe pears, peeled, chopped and cores removed
• 1 large carrot, UNpeeled and chopped into 2 inch pieces
• 1 1/4 cup water
• 1/4 teaspoons cinnamon

Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the chicken (I used thighs for the higher fat content), and brown on both sides for a couple minutes.  Add the pear slices, carrot (unpeeled for nutrition), and water. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes (make sure chicken is done!).  Transfer mixture to a food processor, sprinkle in some cinnamon if you want, and puree to desired consistency.  This makes lots of extras to freeze!!