Nothing But The Best

Chubby little fingers longingly grasp at everything resembling food. Eager eyes stare longingly at the colorful plates set around the dinner table. My sweet babe is now a bonny nine-month-old and is ripe and ready for the new adventure of solid food. I didn’t want to usher in this stage prematurely and watched carefully the telltale signs revealing his true readiness, and not my own agenda. I would have waited a year if my baby was not ready but I could tell his interest in other food was beyond the normal “grab everything stuff it in your mouth stage”.

As many readers may know by now, I am a fervent believer in eating as much raw and living food as possible. This is how we feed our living cells with live and power-packed nutrition instead of dead, degraded slop.

In spite of conventional pediatric advice to begin your baby on cereal (usually processed, cooked, de-natured, stripped and basically white rice packaged junk) and then progress to jarred baby food which has all its life and goodness heated right out of it, I choose to rebel and follow common sense.

With a little ticking of the ole machine upstairs I realize that the best food for my baby to is fresh, raw, unrefined, enzyme and phyto-nutrient packed food. Breast milk is raw and unpasteurized and contains all the necessary enzymes for easy digestion. If we start replacing this perfect “living” food with cooked de-natured stuff, we jeopardize our baby’s health. When our child needs solids we should replace the breast milk with a food that is equally beneficial to our baby’s growing needs.

Living food contains enzymes for easy digestion that are destroyed in cooked food. Until now your baby has been living on “raw” breast milk. Introducing enzyme-less cooked food to your little baby’s untainted intestines is foreign to its system and is the beginning of digestive weakness.

This isn’t to say you give your nine-month-old a raw carrot and carry on folding the clothes. Until your baby has molars it is not ready for raw vegetables. Don’t worry. Your baby will be perfectly healthy without canned, mashed, boring, cooked jars of baby food veggies. Just think about it. If we have to destroy the nutrients to get the food to an edible state for a little baby, the baby is not ready for it. It's common sense. Baby’s teeth are telltale signs of what and when to feed an infant.

Soft, ripe, squishy raw fruit is the perfect food to start feeding your baby.  It is power-packed with vitamins and minerals and contains necessary enzymes, not only for digestion, but also for stimulating necessary brain development.

Avocados

Avocados are wonderful beginners and future staples. They are a true super-food, packed with antioxidants, especially vitamin E and all essential amino acids. They provide essential fatty acids imperative for proper growth and brain function. Babies love their smooth texture and delicate flavor. Cut a ripe avocado in half, flick the seed out and scrape little bits onto a baby spoon and presto, you have the perfect meal, fit for a royal baby.

Ripe Pear

My baby loves it when I can get a hold of a very ripe Bartlett pear. I sit him in my lap and hold it to his mouth letting him gnaw it to the core. This is a real treat.

Mangoes

My family love mangoes. We purchase them by the box from international stores where they are less expensive. I blend mangoes into a mousse in my Vita-mix blender and my baby licks them up. Don’t throw the seeds away after cutting off most of the flesh for the above recipe or for general eating. Let your baby hold it and suck it for as long as it keeps him happy. You’ll need a high chair for this one, as it gets messy. This is my little baby’s all-time favorite.

Raw apples

I often de-core an apple or two, throw them in my Vita-mix or blender and process until smooth. Cube it first and use a wooden spoon to push the pieces down into the blades to liquefy. Beware of pushing the wooden spoon too hard and getting it caught by the blade.

Any pureed fruit works well but don’t mix fruits together in the beginning or introduce too many too quickly. Let your baby’s delicate system adjust. It is best to avoid citrus, kiwi fruit and pineapples in the beginning as they are too strong for their little mouths. Watch how your baby reacts.

Mashed Banana

Of course mashed banana is always a favorite. Do not use bananas that are not speckled as their starch has not fully broken down into simple sugars and they are harder to digest.

Organic is always the better choice, especially when it comes to babies. We need to give them the best start possible. Produce that is grown organically on rich, fertile soil has far more nutrients than the commercial counterpart. They give you more bang for your buck. It would take a sack full of regular apples to give you all of the phyto-nutrients and minerals in one organic apple. When we become aware of this, the price on organic food doesn’t seem so high.

Often there are sales on organic food. This is when I buy up large and end up paying less than the regular kind. If your budget doesn’t stretch that far, don’t sweat it. Eat and be merry. Commercial produce still contains the “life energy” enzymes and many nutrients our bodies desperately need. Just wash them well in a sink full of water and a TBS. of Epsom salts.

Protect Their Taste Buds

I am in awe of the amazing gift of food that God, in all his wisdom, has provided for us. Very few eat heartily of His provision but prefer to indulge in man’s perversions and imitations. The Master Chef’s creations are far more delectable. We just have to cleanse and retrain our jaded taste buds to enjoy their purity. We need to protect our little babies’ taste buds from becoming tainted by our addictions. Let’s give them a clean slate and a better start.

God has provided a vast smorgasbord of vibrant and succulent foods that are satiated with life-sustaining qualities. He has locked inside them super-incredible substances that scientists have not even begun to discover. It’s not about buying teething biscuits or fortified baby cereal with a few fake, test-tube vitamins added in the mix, but partaking of the original “raw” formula with all of the mysterious nutrients intended for us.

One of my passions is to search out some of our Creator’s “super- foods” that He has given to us for energy and rejuvenation. I delve beyond the basic food groups. My treasure hunt is empowered by wanting to reveal all God’s gifts to my family. I don’t want us to miss out on any of His wonders. It’s like Christmas everyday when you begin to research natural plant life. Our Creator is such a generous giver and has bountifully bestowed us with provision, not only for delicious dining, but also for the healing of our physical ailments.

Coconut Butter/Oil

Pure, cold-pressed, unrefined coconut butter/oil is one of my recent discoveries. I have just finished reading a life-changing book called “The Healing Miracles of Coconut Oil” by Bruce Fife. It is truly a “must read” if you are interested in preserving your family’s health.

Some of you may be already aghast at the thought of coconut oil being healthy. Yes it has had a bad rap, mainly from the soybean oil industry that has tried to tread down all competition. And yes, it is a saturated fat. But not all saturated fats are alike. The saturated fat in meat and dairy are LONG CHAIN FATTY ACIDS -- LCFA’S. These saturated fats are clogging and less healthy. The saturated fat of the coconut is very rare and only found in two other edible places on the planet, one of which is mothers’ milk.

It is comprised of MEDIUM CHAIN FATTY ACIDS -- MCFA’S. They are easy to digest and, unlike any other fat, are sent straight to the liver where they are used as energy and not stored as fat deposits. They are coined the “Low Fat - Fat” and contain the least calories of all fats. They promote weight loss (if needed) by raising your body’s thermogenic temperature and supporting healthy metabolic function. The MCFA’S in coconut oil are the same ones found, in a smaller degree, in your breast milk, which protect your baby from viruses and germs. The more a breastfeeding mother consumes coconut oil or natural coconut products, the more MCFA’S she will have in her milk and flowing into her baby. Sadly, because of our modern day deficient diets, many mothers produce very little of these disease protecting MCFA’S.

These MCFA’S not only help with the absorption of necessary fats but they also improve the baby’s ability to absorb fat-soluble vitamins, minerals and proteins.  If breast milk is lacking in MCFA'S, an infant can suffer from nutritional deficiencies and become more vulnerable to infectious disease. If a nursing mother consumes virgin coconut oil everyday, her milk’s MCFA level will be extremely high. Mary G Enig, PH.D., an expert in lipid chemistry says, “This gives an important benefit. The milk has increased amounts of the protective antimicrobials, lauric acid and capric acid, which gives even greater protection to the infant.”

These wonderful oils, locked within the coconut, are marvelous in protecting family members of all ages. If you feel a ‘flu coming on, take two TBS. of coconut oil/butter three times a day in a glass of fresh juice and you will ward off the virus or greatly reduce the duration. Give it to your toddlers to prevent ear infections.

Pure, raw coconut oil is being used to treat AIDS and scientists are working with it to create a line of pharmacuticals that will be effective in fighting viruses and strains of “super germs” that are immune to antibiotics. Virgin coconut oil is anti-microbial, anti-fungal, anti-viral and anti protozoal.

Mothers! It even fights yeast infections. Are you always tired?  Do you suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Fibromialgia? Coconut oil is being used as a successful treatment. It prevents and diminishes wrinkles and it heals the hair shaft, leaving it soft as silk. I use it on my face at night before going to bed. It has a delightful, delicate tropical aroma. It is also a great massage oil for the married.

If you are going to cook, this is the only oil you should use. The fact that it is saturated makes it less sensitive to heat. It does not produce the trans fatty acids that become “free radicals” in the body and degenerate health from the cellular level. Scientists agree that “free radicals” are the greatest destroyers of our health as they attack the sensitive nucleous and DNA of our cells. Nutritionists agree that our major onslaught of “free radicals” are received through trans fats. These deranged fats are all hydrogenated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated oils that are put to any kind of heat -- and most foods are prepared with them.

Even cold pressed olive oil becomes a trans fat when you cook it. All mono or poly fats stored in clear containers are tainted with trans fats as they are sensitive to light and easily oxidized, thus becoming free radicals.

Coconut oil is a family “must have” from medicine to culinary use. I have run down a bunny trail, but I wanted to share this miracle food with you because it is an important food for a baby. It was the first food I gave to my sweet babe, Cedar. He adores it and eats it by the spoonful, as it becomes a creamy butter with a tropical flare when stored below 78 degrees.

It is also great in desserts as it thickens a mousse pie when chilled. And it does not add weight to your bathroom scale. It will not make a baby lose weight as the baby fat is recognized by the body to be necessary. It is, however, a great source of energy for their growing needs. I mix the liquid (liquid stored at room temperature) version in most of my baby’s fruit purees. It is especially yummy in blended mangoes, even for adults.

Spirulina

Another super food I give my baby is spirulina. If I had to be stranded on a desert Island and could only take along one food, I think I would take this amazing gift from God. I purchase spirulina in bulk from the Internet or from the bulk bins at the health market but never in expensive little bottles.

I mix spirulina in my baby’s mashed banana with a little extra pure water, fresh juice or coconut oil as it thickens it a little. I mix it in all my toddler’s smoothies as well. It may give green moustaches but let’s train our children that “green is cool!” I also mix 2 heaped tsp. of this great stuff with the water extracted from a young coconut which is the first liquid I ever give my baby, beside breast milk.

 

Your raw food encourager, SERENE ALLISON

Primm Springs, Tennessee, USA

 

Serene’s recipe books, REJUVENATE YOUR LIFE, RECIPES FOR ENERGY and COCONUT BUTTER RECIPIES can be purchased by clicking on these titles on this web page.

Here are two simple recipes for you:

MANGO POPSICLES

1. Mix 2 large mangoes with 3 TBS. of pure coconut oil and blend until whipped.

2. Pour into Popsicle molds and serve to toddlers. Even let your baby have a lick on hot summer days. That’s if you and hubby haven’t raided the freezer and eaten them all when the children aren’t looking.

 

MANGOE PIE

Granola Crumb Crust:

Place the following in a food processor and process roughly:

2 cups Rejuvenation Granola (you can find the recipe in Rejuvenate Your Life or order)

2 pinches sea salt (approximately ½ tsp.)

Add 1 whole package of squished dates (370g packet) or 2 pressed and packed cups of chopped dates.

Place all in a bowl and with greased hands knead together. Process until it forms a ball. Press into two pie plates.

 

Mango Dream Filling:

In a blender place 3 large mangoes and 4 – 6 oz. coconut oil

Add 2 tsp. psylliam powder (optional). Place on crust and freeze.

Thaw for 20 minutes to ½ hour before serving.