How to Guide - Thinning your Stage 1 and Stage 2 My Little Foodie Meals

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]If your baby prefers smoother pureés at the start of their weaning journey, you may find that some of your My Little Foodie meals need a little extra liquid to help loosen the consistency. The good news is that there are so many options available when thinning pureés for babies over 6 months;

• Tap water
• Cow’s milk or plant-based milk
• A splash of your baby’s usual milk;breast or formula milk

Whatever you choose to thin your baby’s pureé, there are a couple of things you need to keep in mind…

Using tap water

After 6 months, there is no need to boil water for babies so tap water can be added straight into the food before or after blending to help loosen the consistency. If you can, make use of the water you used to cook the veggies in as this will also help to sneak in an extra splash of nutrients that leached from the vegetables as they were cooked!

Using cow’s milk or plant-based milk

Cow’s milk or plant-based milks are absolutely fine to use in cooking from 6 months… Just make sure you don’t substitute their usual milk (breast milk or formula) for any of these varieties until they are at least 1 year old.

Using formula milk

Whilst you shouldn’t keep leftover bottles of formula milk, it IS perfectly fine to use freshly prepared formula milk as an ingredient within a meal or pureé that you wish to keep and reheat another day! Just make sure that if you choose to use formula milk to thin any of your My Little Foodie meal kits, you follow these simple guidelines so that the leftovers are suitable for freezing and reheating:

• Use freshly prepared formula - don’t use leftover milk from a previous feed
• After cooking and adding the formula, ensure your pureé is cooled as quickly as possible and put into the fridge or freezer within 2 hours
• Ensure you follow the reheating and shelf-life guidance in the table below

Using breastmilk

Breastmilk is great for your baby for so many reasons and is also great to add a familiar taste to your baby’s pureé; especially in the early days of weaning! However, it’s important to remember that breastmilk must never be refrozen. When it comes to using breast milk within our My Little Foodie meal kits, we would always recommend using freshly expressed milk rather than previously frozen breastmilk so that you can freeze or save the leftovers for later! However, you can of course still use defrosted breastmilk to thin a pureé you are serving to the baby straight away.

Shelf Life Guidance

Depending on what you use to thin your baby’s pureé, it may affect the shelf life. See our handy table below for guidance:

	Shelf Life in the Fridge	Suitable to be Frozen?
Pureés thinned using tap water	2 days	✅
Pureés thinned using cow’s milk or plant-based milk	2 days	✅
Pureés thinned with formula milk	1 day	✅
Pureés thinned using freshly expressed breast milk	2 days	✅
Pureés thinned with previously frozen breast milk	Dispose of leftovers	❌
Use all frozen foods within 24 hours of defrosting and only reheat leftovers once!

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