Making Baby Food

Along with questions about cloth diapering, I get lots of questions about making baby food. I thought a blog post about it might be a good idea to I can just direct people to my blog on the next inquiry I get. So here it goes.

Making baby food is SUPER easy! I didn't do it with my first, but my second and third RARELY had jarred baby food. It's really not very hard, it doesn't really take up too much time, and you don't have to worry about storing all those jars of baby food! I think the thing I liked best about it though was the flexibility. I could control the consistency of the food as well as the TYPE of food. I was able to mix different flavors that you can't find in a jar. I really had a lot of fun actually cooking for my little ones. I know a lot of people cite the cost as being one of the biggest benefits, but when I sat down and did a little math, it wasn't all that cheaper to make the food--that said, I did use all organic food for my kids when I made baby food.

With #2 I didn't have a food processor so I just used a blender, which worked, but was a lot more work than the food processor. If I had know how much easier it was I would have gotten a food processor with #2. I did have one with my last and it was WAY faster and the food was much smoother. BIG plus. I know they sell those all-in-ones that seam and puree babyfood, but I never thought those would work too well in the long run. The biggest reason being, if I'm going to make baby food, I want to do it in bulk, not in small amounts like those machines do.

I used fresh produce whenever I could find it, but when I couldn't, I used frozen. Wholesome Baby Food is the BEST site for directions on how to make EVERYTHING from rice cereal (did this with my last, but not my daughter) to dried fruit to WHEN it's ok to introduce certain foods. Another thing I liked about it was just the ideas I got from it. I never thought about avocado as a good baby food or making sure that I bought unsulphered apricots. I won't give directions here about how to cook the foods since that site does such a great job.

As far as storage goes, I always used ice cube trays. Each cube equals one ounce which is GREAT so you know how much your child is eating. I also bought some silicone trays by Beabe which are meant specifically for baby food storage. They were great as the kids were a little older and eating more than a few ounces at each meal.

So I would just cook the food, puree it to the consistency that my kids needed at the time, then freeze it in an ice cube tray. I'd then put them in freezer bags and store them in the freezer. The only take a few seconds to defrost in the microwave, but I would also plan each meal the night before sometimes and put them in the fridge to defrost overnight. I used them when I traveled as well, depending on how long I was going to be gone, I would either defrost them or leave them frozen so they could defrost while I was out and about.

I would generally take an hour or two at a time and make a lot of food. I would sometimes make one thing when I was making dinner too, like steaming peas while I was boiling water for spaghetti night. It didn't really take me too long, especially in the early months when they didn't eat a whole lot and a tray if food would last a lot longer.

Making my own baby food just seemed so much safer to me. I didn't have to worry about preservatives or additives in the food I was feeding my kids. I still feel guilty for feeding my oldest so much jarred junk. I even fed him Gerber Meat Sticks, which now I wouldn't let my kids touch with a 10 foot pole. I really struggled with the transition away from pureed baby food to finger foods to "real" food with him. It was so much easier with the other two because I was able to determine the texture of what I was feeding.

Good Luck!