Egg Bites

8 eggs

5 pieces of bacon, cooked crisp and crumbled

1 cup mozarella cheese

1 cup cottage cheese

1/2 cup half and half

1-2 Tablespoons hot sauce

handful of fresh chopped spinach

Place eggs, mozarella, cottage cheese, half and half, hot sauce and spinach into a large mixing bowl and thoroughly blend together with an immersion blender. Pour into egg molds (that have been sprayed with non-stick spray) until each cup is about 3/4 full. Sprinkle bacon over each cup. Cover with foil or silicone lid. Pour 1 cup of water into the Instant Pot. Stack egg molds on the trivet and lower into the Pot. Pressure cook for 9 minutes with a 10 minute natural release. Let egg bites cool in the mold for about 10 minutes before flipping the mold over and releasing.

So I have made a couple of batches of egg bites using various recipes and this is finally the right consistency for me. Some are too cheesy, some are too soft, etc. The great thing about these is that you can personalize them however you like. I do like the extra flavor of adding diced and sauteed red peppers but I didn't have any at the time. Alternatively, you can diced up jarred roasted red peppers and skip the saute step. But if you want cheddar or feta cheese, change that up. Don't like bacon? Try Canadian bacon or sausage. If you do not have an immersion blender, I have read that a food processor or regular blender works well also, although I have not tried it. I have found that not letting them cool a bit in the mold first leaves them a bit squishy when you flip them out and they don't form properly. They kind of spread out and, if you put them on a cooling rack, they slide through the cracks. We freeze these and then just pop them in the microwave in the morning for a quick breakfast. I am on a mission to make my early work mornings easier and this is definitely a time saver for me and it is nice for my husband to have breakfast already made for him when he is trying to juggle to two kiddos and get them ready for their day as well (see my earlier post that includes the recipe for pancake bites that he can feed our daughter!). I have 3 egg molds now and I just stack them on top of each other and cook all at once. For me, this was definitely a time saver and worth the extra money. Just make sure they come with silicone lids- only one of mine did so now I have to cover the other two with aluminum foil. I just find this a bit more wasteful than it should be. This combo made 18 evenly sized egg bites for me.

I switched the ingredients around from this recipe I found: https://www.myforkinglife.com/sous-vide-egg-bites-recipe-instant-pot/ 

Homemade Baby Food

2 lb carrots - 6 minutes

1/4 tea ginger

2 heads of broccoli - 3 minutes

1 small potato - 16 minutes

1 Tbs olive oil

2 red bell peppers - 3 minutes

1 small potato - 16 minutes

2 sweet potatoes - 16 minutes

1/4 curry tea powder

12 ounces asparagus - 3 minutes

4 mint leaves

Add about a cup of water to the Instant Pot. Cook vegetables accordingly. Do not discard the water after the vegetables are done cooking. Add vegetables and additional ingredients to your food processor and blend until smooth. Add reserved water from the Instant Pot to the puree until you reach the desired consistency. Drop into ice cube trays and freeze.

What an exciting time- the baby is ready to eat real food! Think it is too hard or too time consuming to make your own food? Think again! It's so easy! And can be prepared quickly during baby's nap time! I used these recipes for my first daughter but I didn't have the Instant Pot yet and had to spend the time to roast everything in the oven or steam on the stovetop. Dishes everywhere and it did take more time. A little pre planning made this go around so much easier. I started with the potatoes since they take the longest. I did put the sweet potatoes and the regular potatoes in together. This was the only one I did together since you are supposed to introduce foods one at a time and since you use the water from the pot, I didn't want things to mix. I also had to play with the cooking times so I didn't really know what could be cooked together anyways. (Keep in mind these are not usual cooking times for vegetable as you want them really soft.) While the potatoes are cooking, roughly chop the broccoli, clean out the peppers, peel the carrots and do any other prep work you can squeeze in that time frame. Then just go down the line- while one veggie is cooking, blend and prepare the previous. That. Is. It. So easy! And since I knew this would take a little over an hour, I did throw an acorn squash in the oven to bake while I was using the Instant Pot to cook the rest. The carrots, red peppers and the broccoli recipes made about two ice cube trays full and the others right around one. I left the purees a little on the thick side- you can add water later but as baby gets better at eating you want it to remain thicker. Then just pull out a cube at meal time and pop in the microwave. With my first daughter, we would just blend up whatever protein we were eating and then add one of the cubes to thin it out. Easy peasy and baby gets to enjoy dinner with you! And I really love that these recipes introduce baby to spices and flavors we use frequently. You can do it- give it a try! 

Here is the link to the original recipes:

https://babyfoode.com/blog/15-stage-one-baby-purees-that-actually-taste-delicious/