Walnut Raspberry Oatmeal

Perfect macronutrient balance

Sometimes (actually more often than not) it can be pretty hard to prepare a delicious, home-cooked meal that combines all macronutrients and has the perfect amount of calories to support your little ones growth and development. Luckily we have done that for you in our Walnut Raspberry Oatmeal recipe. Here, it is intended as a breakfast meal for your 1-year-old but if you change the quantities it can easily be a meal for any age. And of course you can serve it as any other meal of the day.

Nutritional stuff

Oats are our go-to food when we want a highly nutritious carbohydrate that can easily be paired with pretty much any ingredient. Their high-fiber content helps with digestion and they also provide a fairly high amount of manganese and phosphorus.

For our protein component of the meal, we choose kefir since it is also high in calcium. Make sure that you choose the full-fat ones for children under the age of 2 just to be sure they are getting enough fat and calories. Whether you choose cow's or goat's is up to you since at this age children can start drinking both types of milk.

Walnuts add some "good" fats to the meal. Walnuts also contain a precursor to omega-3 fatty acids so they can be considered a kind of an omega-3 source (although fatty fish remains number 1). Walnut nutrients also help the fight against heart and metabolic diseases.

And if you thought that raspberries were in this meal only for their color and taste, think again. Apart from being a great fiber source, they are full of antioxidants and show anti-inflammatory benefits.

Preparation

Since this is a recipe intended for a 1 year old you shouldn't need to puree or mash it but serve as is. However, because of the kefir and cooked oats, it might be easier to spoon feed it rather than baby-led wean it. But if you make it a thicker consistency you just might pull it off (send us pictures!).