Making your own baby food also ensures that your baby is exposed to a greater variety of tastes and textures. This will help your baby when making transition to table foods and also help him or her develop healthy eating habits. See http://www.baby-shop.org.uk/guide/ for a collection of articles on babies and toddlers.

Baby Food Preparation Tips

1. As babies are susceptible to digestive upsets, always work with clean hands and use clean cooking utensils, preparation surfaces, pots and pans etc., when making home made baby food. Prepare foods immediately upon removing them from refrigerator and freeze immediately after cooking any foods you want to store.

2. Steaming vegetables is best method of preparation. This softens them, makes them easier to chew, and preserves more of vitamins and minerals than boiling. A steamer basket is cheap and by cooking fruits and vegetables in it, you'll be sure of keeping nutrients in food, instead of in cooking water. 3. To puree your foods, you can use a fork, a food mill or blender. A blender quickly purees almost anything into finest consistency. When your baby first starts on solids, you'll be pureeing things to a very fine consistency and, as baby gets a little older, you will make foods a little coarser. You may wish to buy a food mill which comes in large and small sizes. It is very handy and inexpensive. The food mill strains most cooked foods to a very smooth consistency, although meats can be a problem as they will have a coarser texture. Remember all tools you need to make baby food are probably already in your kitchen.

by Jan-Olov von Wowern

I will here use term "forefather" in sense of "founder", which, as used in nobiliary genealogical work, usually refers to person who was first ennobled or recognized as noble.

If headship of family is hereditary, you are most likely to find founding forefather by simply tracing family line which possesses headship backwards, until you encounter person who was ennobled or first recognized as noble.

If you know geographical place (country, county, city) where family was first identified, you may well search its history for family name in question in order to find your forefather. You should be aware of possibility of variant spellings. This is also how I found further information about founder of my own family. In official history of city of Antwerp, "Geschiedenis van Antwerpen", a monumental 9 volume work, I found a list of "sheriffs" of Antwerp who were also made Marquises (margraves) of Land of Ryen (the county surrounding Antwerp in medieval times). My forefather Gilles van de Wouwere was made a "Schout" of Antwerp and a Margrave of Land of Ryen in 1141, and his son Hendrik succeeded him in 1199.