About Nourished Tots

Welcome to Nourished Tots. My name is Cassie, and I’m the founder of this baby food line and parenting blog. As recent new parents, we’ve had a major learning curve. From feeding to diapering, we knew nothing going into this new adventure. Nourished Tots started because we were traveling with our 6 month old daughter and I was struggling with how to bring my homemade baby food with us through the airport.

As a food scientist and stay at home mom, I felt that I should be making her food at home to provide her the highest quality nutrients. I also know exactly what is going into her food. That said, when we were traveling, I wasn’t able to pack homemade foods. We resorted to mashed bananas, which was okay, but she wasn’t a huge fan of bananas so it would have been better to bring carrots or peas.

The Idea Sparked!

On the way to the airport with my husband and my daughter, I was thinking about this NASA astronaut food we tried at Kennedy Space Center back when we were dating. Through the process of freeze drying, something like ice cream was able to be dried into a product that broke with a crunch similar to a cracker. This got me thinking, why couldn’t baby food be made dried and then you would just add water or milk/formula to rehydrate it. It’d be so convenient for traveling and even to throw in the diaper bag. It would also weigh less than the typical baby food so that means a few less pounds of luggage or in the diaper bag (which don’t try to deny already weighs too much). Water is readily available at most places and if you’re breastfeeding, you should also be able to access that milk pretty easily. 😉

This was also at the time when a lot of the news came out about store-bought baby foods being contaminated with toxic levels of heavy metals and arsenic. Knowing that, I was not interested in serving any of that to my baby. While some of that is inherent to growing conditions of the produce, it’s not all from that. One thing that I will do with this line of products is test the products for these different toxins to ensure quality and safety for our babies.

About the Blog

While we want to provide you with high quality baby food, we also realize that not everyone is out for high end baby food, or wants to even use baby food. As a new parent, I had never heard of baby led weaning (BLW), but after a couple months of using and introducing different baby food purees, we transitioned our little one to BLW. Looking back, I’d probably still start by introducing purees to my baby before starting the on other solids, but BLW has been great for our daughter and getting her to eat all the different food and flavors that we eat in our mostly vegan household. 

We also didn’t know much of anything going into this parenthood journey. I will the be first to admit that I did very little planning and reading prior to my daughter’s birth. My husband and I are both highly educated people and thought we’d be fine, but like anything, parenthood is a game with a huge learning curve. The first few months were spent calling doctor’s offices, lactation lines, talking to friends and family, reading through mommy groups on Facebook, and scouring the internet and books for help and advice. I’ve found so much value in all that we’ve learned and continue to learn that I wanted to document and share that with the world. 

My goal with this blog is to help new parents and old with little tips and tricks we’ve found useful. If one person reads this and finds a helpful tip, my purpose has been served.