home made baked beans

this can be made with smaller quantities of the ingredients, or store what you don't use in the freezer, or share as a family meal.

1 C dry cannellini or butter beans
half jar of tomato paste or 4 tomatoes blended
pinch of mustard seeds
4 cloves
1 clove garlic crushed
1 small onion finely chopped
1 tsp golden kelp
water for soaking and cooking

soak the beans over night. put them in a pot with water about an inch higher than the beans. stir through tomatoes or tomato paste. bring slowly to the boil. add mustard seeds, cloves, onion and garlic. simmer for 1-2 hrs or until beans are a soft. add more water if needed so beans are always covered though water level should reduce substantially by the end of cooking. remove from heat and try and locate the cloves and take them out. blend for younger babies (take out what you want to eat first!)

i normally keep half of this mixture for both zac and i to eat at breakfast and freeze the other half. if freesing i like to use long flattish rectangular containers (like take away containers) then i can take out the block of frozen beans and slice off chunks when i need if i don't just defrost the whole lot for me to eat as well!

normally a baked bean recipe would require you to add sugar, black strap molasses and salt to taste but i have avoided this because i don't want zac having added salts and sugars - i might as well by a can of baked beans if i didn't mind those ingredients. however some books say that black strap molasses is a good source of iron for babies so you can do what you wish. i think zac gets enough iron in a range of other foods so i have left this out too.