Baby food (Part II)

As I wrote in a previous post, there are 2 main reasons to make your own baby food: to avoid ingredients that you don't want to give your baby (like preservatives, flour as "fillers," added sugar and salt), and to save money since store-bought jars are way overpriced.

If making your own baby food is a new concept for you, a good place to start is reading this article on babycenter.com: How to make your own baby food. It covers the basics.

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The Equipment

Baby Food Processor

You don't need much to get started making your own baby food. Mostly, you just need some type of gadget to puree the food.

Before our first child was born, we received a baby food processor as a gift. We've used it through three kids and it still works great. It blends up one or two servings at a time and can be thrown in the dishwasher for an easy clean up.

Hand Blender

We also use our hand blender when it's a larger batch of food, or just simply a fork if it's a banana or something really soft. Occasionally I'll use our potato masher.

So you certainly don't need to go out and buy an expensive appliance, just use what you already have.

The food

Starting out. 

When your baby starts eating around 4 to 6 months, you're probably going to be making single-ingredient meals. You'll be using all the basics: bananas, applesauce, peaches, pears, carrots, peas, sweet potatoes, squash, etc.

For young babies, you will probably have to take off any fruit skins since you need to get it down to a fine texture. As they get older, you can leave the skins on when you puree it (a lot of the nutrients are in the skin).

(One thing to always consider is if the produce was grown using pesticides and chemicals, in which case you should always remove the skins. But if it's organic or a local pesticide-free farmer, then it would be okay.)

For vegetables, cook them as you would for yourself and then puree. Things like sweet potatoes and butternut squash can be done in the oven, and others can be steamed on the stove-top in water. Be sure not to overcook the vegetables or you will start to lose nutrients. Just get them soft enough to be able to be pureed.

The experienced eater.

Once your baby gets to the 8 to 9 month range, he/she will be ready for some more texture and multi-ingredient meals. Now you get to start using some more creativity in your preparations.

To make a big batch of food, what Sean and I do is pick two or three ingredients to mix together. We usually pick a grain or bean - like brown rice, quinoa, barley, pinto beans, navy beans - and one or two vegetables. Now is also when we start adding in leafy greens which have a lot more texture - kale, collard greens, spinach. So many nutrients! 

Once everything is cooked (often we'll cook all the ingredients in the same pot), we just use our hand blender to blend it up. The older the child gets, the less you need to blend it. We'll keep about 3 days worth in the fridge and freeze the rest.

And of course we still give the fruits as single ingredient meals or snacks. Other foods to add at this age are cottage cheese and yogurt (maybe mixed with fruit).

12 months+

Once you have a one year old, they should be eating a lot of what you make for dinner for the whole family. That's not always possible - like the nights you have pizza - so having the batches of pureed food around is still useful until they have most of their teeth in.

When I can, I take our dinners and either cut them up really small (like with pasta), or put them in the baby food processor (like homemade soup or chili).

Here is what our one year old typically eats: pureed grain/bean/veggie mixtures, adult meals pureed or chopped when possible, plain sweet potato, plain squash, mashed or pureed fruits, cottage cheese, whole wheat bread, and oatmeal (for breakfast).

A tip for storage

This is not my original idea by any means, but use an ice cube tray to store your baby food in the freezer. When you need a meal for that day, take out what you need (my one year old will eat 4 to 5 cubes per meal) and let it defrost for a bit and then microwave it the rest of the way.

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I just hope to give a little encouragement in trying to make your own food for your little one. If you use a lot of jars, but it seems overwhelming to switch completely over to homemade overnight, then start small. Just try one batch and see what happens.