Annabel Karmel's New Complete Baby and Toddler Meal Planner - Annabel Karmel

One of the greatest milestones in your young baby's life is when they start moving on to solid foods. Over the years the advice about when this should be and how you should go about it seems to have been constantly changing. However, it is now generally accepted that you should be weaning your baby by six months. As a mother for the first time this can be a somewhat daunting challenge, so, in my case, it was quite a relief to find this fantastic book to guide me through the process!

The New Complete Baby and Toddler Meal Planner is divided into various sections. It starts with looking at the best foods for your baby, and then moves through looking at the different stages from weaning right up to toddlers. As my two daughters have grown, I seem to have worked through this book with them!

The first chapter which looks at the best food for babies is so useful with lots of practical advice. It looks at babies' nutritional requirements and particularly goes through the six essential nutrients that babies and children need in their diets - proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, calcium and iron. It sort of takes you back to GCSE home economics, but when you are entirely responsible for the dietary intake of your baby it is definitely a timely reminder! It then goes on to looking at how you go about preparing food for babies which for first time mums is incredibly useful! It's surprising that however competent you are in the kitchen, the prospect of preparing food for babies can be quite nerve wracking! There is also some practical advice about freezing. It was because of this book that I went out and bought a stack of ice cube trays so that when I was preparing food for my daughter I could cook in larger quantities and freeze - and surprisingly, the size of an ice cube is just about the amount you wan to give your baby when you are just starting!

The next chapter looks at the types of food you can prepare for weaning. Most people start their babies with baby rice, but judging from the looks on my daughters' faces when I tried this it was not the most delicious introduction to 'real food'! So it was not long before we were trying different forms of pureed fruit and vegetables based on Annabel Karmel's recipes. She has lots of good tips particularly when you might want to start combining more than one fruit or vegetable. Also, very helpful for anxious mums, is her tips for introducing solids, such as introducing the solids when the baby is not TOO hungry and the type of spoon to use that is best for the baby's tongue.

In the following chapters which look at six to nine months, nine to twelve months and then toddlers she introduces some really delicious recipes, introducing appropriate food types at the correct times. She also, at the beginning of each of these suggestions, offers weekly meal planners, which if you follow, you can be assured of providing a healthy balanced diet. I have to say that some of the recipes are so tasty that we now cook them for the whole family! One such recipe is nursery fish pie, which is described as a good old fashioned favourite and I have to say that both of my girls love it!

Now that my daughters are almost four and just two, I don't really have that much need to call on this book any more as they pretty much eat the same as us. However, sometimes when I am lacking inspiration, particularly for my suddenly turned very fussy older daughter, I will try and find something new to make from this book. And there are some lovely options - stir fried chicken with vegetables and noodles, peaches with Amaretto Biscuits and Benihana steak (a japanese dish) to name but a few.

So I would definitely recommend this book to guide you through your children's early dietary experiences. Its combination of excellent practical advice as well as delicious recipes make it a must for all new mums. And even though I don't refer to it so much these days, I will still be keeping hold of it and dipping in to it for a few years to come yet!

At present, you can buy the hardcover copy from Amazon for £7.99 - definitely money well spent! Oh, and incidentally, Annabel Karmel has also written a number of other books about weaning and feeding babies and toddlers, but, in my opinion, if you buy this book, you shouldn't really need anything else!