Wednesday Tip

Keep a supply of tinned chopped tomatoes in your cupboard. They are virtually salt-free (0.01g per 100g), healthy, inexpensive, and they make a fantastic base when you only have a few bits and bobs in your fridge. You can add pasta, vegetables, cheese, or anything you like and either puree it or leave it lumpy for older babies.

Image by Flickr user: Stefan Alforn

Mum's multi-coloured beans

I was standing in the supermarket recently, holding a can of Heinz low salt, low sugar beans when I thought, "Beans should be more interesting than this." I have a policy with the food I feed to my baby that if I wouldn't eat it, neither should he.
So I had a little look around the tinned beans isle and found a tin of mixed bean salad in water. It cost less than a pound and had a mix of about five different beans, along with sweetcorn, green beans and chickpeas. "Let's make our own baked beans!" I said to the Little Man, as he chewed on the trolley handle.

This was the result:

Mum's multi-coloured beans

1 can mixed bean salad
1 can chopped tomatoes
Grated cheese
Finely chopped ham

Simply mix, spoon out a portion, heat and serve with some fingers of toast!

For younger babies you could miss out the cheese and ham and blend up the mixture, or else fork mash it.

For variation try spreading some hummus on the toast, or else add in some fingers of cucumber for crunchy freshness.

What was the Little Man's verdict? All gone! (Although the toast fingers mostly went overboard). The yoghurt, pear and banana pieces went down well too. I've got five more portions saved in the freezer and it only took a couple of minutes to make. It tastes so good the Grownups had some as a side salad later on!

[Added] Look out for low-salt ham and cheese at the supermarket as some brands can have a very high salt content. For more information about how much salt babies and toddlers need, check out the NHS guidance.