Accessories for Eating on the Go

Now that Sly is 18 months, we do a lot more activities and trips than we did when she first started eating solids. Packing a toddler-friendly lunch isn’t the easiest task in the world and given the choice, I admit that I’d rather eat at home where my entire kitchen (and stocked pantry, fridge and freezer) is at my disposal.

But since I’m not about to make hermits out of us, I’ve got to pack lunches. And one thing that helps is having a few food accessories that make for easier meals on the go.

I have three things that I count on for pretty much any packable lunch. The first is my Igloo travel cooler, approximately similar to this:

Igloo PolarMax Travel Cooler

Both the top and bottom can hold items, and it does a very good job of keeping things cool when I throw one of those re-freezable Blue Ice bags in it. It’s also firm-sided enough to keep things like bread or cereal bars from getting squished.

That travel cooler isn’t huge, but it’s big enough to hold quite a bit of food for both Sly and me. For bringing along staples like yogurt and cheese that need to be kept cool, this is perfect.

Travel-Meal-Must-Have #2: the utensil travel case from Sassy. It comes with a spoon and fork, but I prefer using the Take & Toss utensils, which fit perfectly. The tube-shape means the case isn’t bulky and fits nicely into the travel cooler or my diaper bag. It holds up to 3 T&T spoons or forks (it’s nice to have a spare and/or a spoon for myself).

Sassy Travel Utensil Case with Fork & Spoon

Not only is it nice for bringing clean utensils along, but it keeps them separate from everything else after they’re dirty. And washes up well.

Must-Have #3 is also from Sassy:  their insulated feeding pots. These can be used to keep either jarred or homemade foods warm for short periods of time.

Sassy Insulated Feeding Pots

I got two of these as shower gifts, and they’re just great! At some point I’ll time how long they keep food warm (it’s not Guinness-worthy or anything, but way better than anything not insulated), but lately I’ve been using them for foods that can be eaten cold just as well — whole-grain pasta with olive oil, or (cooked) frozen peas.

They seem to do best if you heat the food in the pot and then seal it up, as opposed to heating the food in a separate container. I’ve never used them for jarred foods, so I’m not sure whether they work as well for that.

Sometimes one accessory works over another because of the little things. Take the insulated pots — their lids screw on. Most of the other bowls I have for Sly have snap-on lids, which often snap on a bit too tightly. This is great for avoiding spills … until you try to pop open a full bowl and noodles go flying.

So, enough on that — next post I’ll get into handy foods for packing toddler lunches!

Favorite spout sippy cups

We went to sippy cups early. Sly was breastfed and only tolerated bottles as long as she absolutely had to — which for us was six months.

So we started trying sippies, which luckily she liked. We had the best luck with the silicon spout, built-in-valve sippies from Munchkin. I didn’t much care for the sippies with valves (a la Playtex) — they seemed to take a lot of work for Sly to get the liquid out, no matter how much I fiddled with them.

Mighty Grip Trainer Cup from Munchkin, 8 oz.

Once we went to hard-top sippies (which my pedi recommended that we be using exclusively by 12 months), I turned to the Take & Toss cups. They’re inexpensive, the right size for Sly to manage, and super simple: lid and cup. No extra parts to wash or adjust, and they’re BPA free and dishwasher-friendly.

They fit nicely into my diaper bag’s pockets or the cup holders of our car. If I leave one somewhere, no big deal — they come in packs of five.

Take and Toss sippy cups from The First Years

I also appreciate the fact that they come in a smaller size as well, with an optional handle attachment that helps secure the lid better. (All of the lids and handles will fit the small or larger cups.)

Trainer cup with handles from The First Years

If your little one is the type to pry off lids, the handle attachment may be a good way to foil them.

My one not-so-stellar observation about these cups is that we tend to go through a lot of the lids. Sly likes to chomp on them, and when she was getting her front teeth, she would bite so hard she’d crack the spouts. So I’d buy another pack and then have a ton of the cups but always be hunting for a lid.

I do notice a leak now and then, particularly as we wear out the lids — usually only when Sly leaves her sippies scattered around the house lying on their sides. But since Sly is still only drinking water, having a 100% leak-proof sippy isn’t that big a deal to me.

Favorite Baby/Toddler Cookbooks

When I’m looking for a new meal idea, or just an interesting combination of flavors to try, these are the baby/toddler cookbooks that I use. I found plenty of books at my local library, but these are the ones I liked enough to buy and reference regularly.

1) Superfoods for Babies and Children by Annabel Karmel. Her website has a bunch of recipes and other tidbits, too. She’s a UK author, so she takes a slightly different approach in terms of what’s “allowed” at what ages, FYI. Annabel Karmel has various baby-toddler food books out, but there’s a lot of overlap in recipes from one book to another. This is the one I like the best.

Also note that despite the similarity in title, this is NOT Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron. I know a lot of people who rave about that book, but I found it a PITA to use and her attitude on meats was completely unhelpful — basically, that they are “not super baby foods,” shouldn’t be in a baby’s diet and therefore she’ll only give like three recipes. Gee, thanks so much.

2) Cooking for Baby: Wholesome, Homemade, Delicious from Williams Sonoma. (I have the 2008 edition with a pea puree on the cover, but apparently there’s a new one for 2009 — no idea how it compares.) This book has some off-beat flavor combinations for infants (green beans with mint, edamame and yogurt puree, roasted red pepper and goat cheese) and a focus on using unusual grains (quinoa, amaranth, millet) that I haven’t seen in other baby cookbooks.

The toddler recipes are equally adventurous: things like lentil burgers and chicken and mango quesadillas. Man, flipping through this book right now reminds me that I should use it more!

3) Mommy Rescue Guide: Toddler Meals: Lifesaving Recipes and Advice for Making Fun, Nutritious Food, by Shana Priwer and Cynthia Phillips. This pocket-size book is stuffed with recipes for different age ranges: 9-12 months, 12-18 months, 18-24 months and 24-36 months. Obviously you can pick and choose, but it’s nice to have a place to start. They list a minimum recommended daily toddler diet (hugely reassuring on those days when your toddler doesn’t eat much, because it’s a reminder that really, they don’t need a ton of huge meals) and I like the conversational-but-factual tone of their advice-on-feeding chapter.

The type of recipe ranges from no-brainer basic (egg noodles plus peas) to intriguing: peachy sweet potatoes, Hawaiian poached pork. They also have a bunch of easy recipes for items you wouldn’t normally think to make yourself: grape juice, graham crackers and yogurt, to name a few. LOVE this little book!