"This is an excellent baby food book covering everything from the basics right up to gourmet. The recipes are grouped into common sense chapters such as first foods, everyday meals and one called missy independent. This makes it easy to find the starting point that is right for your baby.

The concept is to introduce a wide range of 'real' foods using fresh ingredients and no added sugar or salt.

An added bonus is that the majority of the recipes are suitable for freezing and ideal for batch cooking.

The chapter that I really liked was missy independent because I have a militant 15 month old who will not accept any help with eating. Tuna and sweetcorn cakes and cream cheese pastry slices were recipes I had never heard of but they have now turned into firm favourites.

Another bonus is that many of the meals such as chicken and pumpkin risotto are fine for adults as long as you add any seasoning afterwards. The recipes are well described and generally have no more than 5 steps, so they are suitable for less confident cooks.

Overall I was very impressed with the book. I found it far better than Annabel Karmel's similar book because there were more freezable meals and more ideas suitable for adults as well was children.

Nikki

www.amazon.co.uk

"Finger Foods for Babies And Toddlers is a colourful, easy to read book for parents of those little ones who have moved passed mushy foods and into the realm of semi-adult eating.

Jennie Maizels knows all to well the trials of trying to get a toddler to eat healthily so she devised fun, colourful recipes to encourage her daughter Millie to partake.

All the staples are there such as Eggy Bread, meatballs etc but what makes this book interesting is the fact that she includes recipes for all the foods we adults like to eat too, only in toddler versions.

Since we all know how much kids like to act grown up she has found a perfect way to let the little ones think they are eating like mummy and daddy. My particular favourites were burrito wraps, mini pizzas and vegetables with exciting dips. Maizels doesn't leave out the vegetarians either, with veggie alternatives for most of the meat dishes too.

All in all I found this book invaluable and would recommend it to all my friends

Karen

www.amazon.co.uk