OK so immediately when Faith came home with us and began growing and changing, I knew I would make her baby food. It was something I wanted so badly to do for her since I couldn't breast feed her. I wanted to find a way to give her the best and healthiest since I wasn't able to provide her with what is best in the form of mother's milk.
So now our baby girl is 4 months old and Friday, will be trying bananas for the first time. I am going to make them fresh but what about everything else?
When I really got into it and what it all entailed I began doubting if I could do it. I don't know whats better giving my daughter fresh home made baby food or just spending the time I would be making her food playing with her instead. I also got scared reading of all the nitrates that could be in home made baby food and how long it could be stored and it all seemed overwhelming to say the least.
I know plenty of people who make their own baby food and obviously have plenty of quality time with their child. I know people who have tried and quit early on as well, and of course I know tons of mommies who bought jar baby food from day one and their children are as healthy and perfect as can be.
So what the heck do I do!?!? I am thinking of making some and buying some. Maybe I will buy the things that require a lot more time and energy and then make the things that are easier like bananas. Then I wonder should I go buy the food processor and the trays to freeze the food or...what I don't know!
If any one has any advice or experience on making baby food could you please leave a comment and let me know. I have already asked a ton of my real life friends so now its to blogging world buddies I go :)
18 comments:
I've thought about doing this also because I will not be able to breastfeed (bummer!) to and my plan is to purchase containers and ice trays and store the food I make in that. There are a lot of recipes/sites online...I know it sounds overwhelming but it does get easier (words used by a good friend who also makes all her baby's food).
Here is a great site for glass containers:
http://www.sks-bottle.com/340c/fin18a.html
Good luck! Hopefully you master this and will be able to give me hints in the future! :)
We made all of z's until he began eating meat. I would love to help you if you want. I would take one morning a month and cook all the food. I also have a big steamer and food processor if you want to borrow them
Bananas are so easy -- just break a piece off, put it in a bowl or plate and mush it up a lot. Since she's still pretty little, you might want to thin it with a bit of formula.
As for the other stuff, I never did anything fancy, but found it pretty easy to puree up a little bit of whatever we were having (green beans, rice, meat -- later). I'd feed some that night, then use plain old ice cube trays to feed the rest. When it was frozen, I'd just pop the cubes in Ziploc baggies.
The jars and stuff, though, are really convenient when you're on the go.
I was hoping to make my own baby food too! I haven't really read up on it so I am not sure how involved it is, but my mom said when I was a baby she just ground up whatever they were eating and gave it to me. I have a juicer you can use to grind up food by just taking out the filter so I was thinking I'd use that. I bought some little food trays but I've heard you can just use ice cube trays too. I don't think babies eat too much at first so I'm thinking you can just spend one day making up a bunch and freezing it and then you're set for a while. I could be totally wrong though. :)
Hi. I have been reading for a while but have not commented before. I made most of my son's baby food. I have a microwave steamer from pampered chef and steamed most of his food in that (squash, green peas, carrots, etc), then just used our food processor to puree it. There is a good website (www.wholesomebabyfood.com) that can give you some good recipes. One of the easiest ways to make the baby food is just to take an afternoon and make enough for a week or two. We used ice trays to freeze the food and regular freezer containers to store it. It is overwhelming when you first start, but it becomes very easy soon! Good Luck!
I do make Farrah's baby food and it is super easy! I just steam all the veggies and fruit and then puree them and store the food in ice trays. I usually make her food at night when she goes to bed. I make apples, pears, peaches, bannanas, sweet potatos, green beans, peas, carrots. I just walk down the baby food isle and get ideas for baby food.
Don't be overwhelmed! I like the idea of making her food but I buy babyfood as well. All that matter's is you love on Faith. She will be healthy no matter how you feed her.
Good luck!
Kelly at three kids a minni-van and allot of love makes her own babyfood. You should connect with her and ask some questions. She's a sweetie.
Her blog link is
http://www.oxboroughchaos.com/
I don't have any advice, just wanted to say that your daughter is beautiful. I think it's amazing that you are making her baby food. Good for you! My husband and I are in the process of adopting a baby boy from Ethiopia, and I've thought about that option as well. I'm not great in the kitchen, so I have a lot to learn before he comes home.
I was also determined to make my daughter's baby food and actually had a lot of fun doing it. Here are a few things I found that helped.
I actually calculated the costs of everything and found, at least for me, that it wasn't CHEAPER to make your own, especially if you do organic stuff. But it was definitely healthier. I ended up doing a healthy mix of both home made and store bought. Gerber makes organic food now, so that eased my mind a lot!
Here are some other helpful tidbits:
1. Williams Sonoma has a machine especially for this called the Beaba Babycook. (You can google it.) It is a machine that looks like a small food processor. It will actually steam the food for you, then blend it until smooth. Basically saves you the trouble of having to get out the food processor, the strainer, and the dishes for transferring from microwave to the processor. It comes with everything you need! TOTALLY worth the investment. I think it runs about $150.
2. ONE STEP AHEAD is a great company for all kinds of baby stuff. They actually have a cheaper baby food maker but I never tried it so I can't comment on it. What I did buy was their stackable babyfood storage containers. They look like plastic baby food jars with lids. They stack and go in your freezer. I found that these work tons better than ice trays or the baby food storage trays with lids. Because the other still seemed to get freezer burn. These are also good when she starts eating things like puffs, finger foods, etc, because you can just fill one up and stick it in your diaper bag! www.onestepahead.com
3. You can go to AMAZON and order the book "Top 100 Baby Purees" - this was a GREAT book and the recipes are easy and make a TON of food.
hope that helps! your baby is so cute.
Haley
Hey, I made a bunch of Paige's stuff and it's not too bad. You just have to plan it out. I would try to do it after I put her down for the night. It always seemed to take longer than I would think it would. Just steam, puree, freeze. I had an issue with Sweet Potatoes. Paige loved them! SO I figured ill make a lot and have them on hand always. So that's what i did. Had like 2 gallon size ziplock bags of ice cube size portions. WELL the babyfood jars say sweet potatoes but they are not sweet potatoes. they are yams. there is a difference! anywho... she did not eat them for a long time so it was a big waist of time.... she did end up eating them after a while... just try small amounts of stuff first and figure out what works for ya!
good luck!
Hi, I just ran across your blog and felt a need to comment on this post. In my experience I've done both. For my son (2.5 yrs old) I did the jar food thing. He is healthy and fine. For my daughter (1 yrs old) I decided to attempt the make your own baby food thing. Guess what? I LOVED IT! I'm expecting #3 in March and I will most def. be making all of my baby food again. I don’t think it hard or time consuming. I work full-time… I have a 2 kid’s and a 3rd on the way… and I never found it a burden to make baby food. Not only is it more healthy, cost saving and fun. It also allows the child to get a wider verity of tastes and textures. My son is the pickiest eater in the world. When he was a baby he did fine with the jar food... but once we moved to table food he just didn't seem to like it. Now at 2.5 I still make him something different for dinner every night. He won't eat meat or anything that looks funny to him.
Now my 1 yr old will eat anything I put in front of her. She has had Chinese, Corn Beef and Cabbage, Meatloaf... you name it she will eat it. She has had no signs of allergies what so ever and she is so healthy. I noticed that my son got the whole orange nose and skin thing when we moved him to jarred foods. I never had that happen with my daughter. She ate sweet potatoes, carrots, squash... and she never had her skin turn orange. This is another reason why I'm not giving #3 jarred food... they just put so much junk in it that they don't need.
I really found that making the food in bulk and freezing it was the best thing. Once they get used to different foods and textures it gets really easy. I would just take w/e I made for dinner and grind it up in the food processor. Then I didn't even have to make Brealy (my daughter) anything different. By 9 months she was completely over processed food and ready for the real thing. That’s when I just started giving her w/e was soft on my plate. Sure enough she would gobble it up and now she just eats whatever I make for dinner.
I would make about 3 months of food and freeze it in ice cube trays. It cost me about $25 for 3 months worth of different foods. I set aside one day and just made all of the different types and froze them. I made a batch that lasted from 4-7 months of age and then one more batch that lasted from 8-10 months. The last batch I made really thick and chunky. She loved everything I made. I also ground up whole oats and dried brown rice into powders. Then I would just boil the powder with water to make her cereal. It was so easy and cheap.
Here is the link that helped me through the process of making my own baby food. It's a wonderful place to go for tips and info.
http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/VegetableRecipes.htm
Sorry for the book… I just really love making my own baby food!
I steam and puree veggies for my daughter (buying frozen currently because fresh is so expensive over the winter months!) and purchase Gerber fruits for her. It's a nice balance and it's worked well for us. Good luck!
OK, so I've been making all of C's baby food since he started eating, and I LOVE it! I honestly have found it to be much easier and less time consuming than I ever imagined! Everything I know I've learned from fellow moms, and mostly from www.wholesomebabyfood.com, which is also where I've gotten all of my recipes so far.
Here's part of another comment I left for another mommy asking similar questions:
I agree that making food is a blast, and I totally second BB's comment about the hand blender! The one we use is called the Thunderstick (yes, as seen on TV!!) http://www.asontv.com/kitchen/thunderstick-mixer-pro.html
It's the only thing we need, it's super easy to clean, and it does even the trickiest of jobs, like when I pureed the Thanksgiving turkey we had. It was gross, but entirely effective! :)
Let me know if you have questions once you get started. IMO, the rewards/benefits far outweigh the time needed to make it happen!
Melba
Ive just learned so much from all the comments:) I know I definitely want to do it when our baby comes so I cant wait to hear what you decide and you will have to give me tips
My good friend does this. She makes it all up mixed with forumla and then freezes it in ice cube trays..then pops it in the microwave as she needs it. So handy and so healthy! Also when Mist was 4 1/2 months old thats when we found out she was allergic to pineapple so keep a log of what you feed her to make sure she has no alleriges!
I made my son’s baby food since he could start eating and after you get a few tricks down it’s super easy. My favorite website for tips and recipes was Wholesomebabyfoods.com.
* The biggest misconception is you to have to have fancy accessories to make and store the food. I simply cut up and placed most of the “first” foods into my metal steam basket then pureed them.
* After pureeing I learned the best way to load the food into the ice cube trays (and yes, regular ice cube trays work great!) was to put the pureed food into a large plastic zip lock and then snip one edge of the bag. It almost looked like I giant frosting bag. This gave me much better control for squeezing the food into the tray and not making a huge mess.
* Once frozen just pop the cubes out and put then in a zip lock and label with the date; that way you can keep track of how long they stay in the freezer.
* I agree with someone else comment about picking out an afternoon and about 4 different foods to make, tray, and freeze. One you do it once you will see X amount of apples make X amount of ice cube trays, then you can decide the quantity you want to make.
I’m a full time working mother so for me it was a great way to connect with my son knowing that he was eating something I prepared for him everyday even though I wasn’t there. As your little one gets older you can start to make the food more chunky and make combo cubes, but for now keep it simple. As weird as it sounds it was almost therapeutic for me to just be in the kitchen, relaxing, making this food. It was something I felt very proud of and so thankful I did! Good luck and if you need any help let me know!
I was given a great book "Super Baby Food" and there is a great website. I think it's wholesomebabyfood.com
I did it for a while. But then I found Happy Baby and Plum organincs which are great...they are in the frozen food section...whole foods and Super Targets carry them. Bananas and avocados are easy...but you can't prepare them ahead and keep them for later use. We didn't start baby food until 6 months and table food came pretty quickly after that.
Best wishes and have fun!
I make some and buy some. Some of the organic brands are high quality, with nothing but natural ingredients, and they aren't too expensive, either. However, Andrew stopped eating the purees pretty early so I had no choice about making my own.
I bought frozen veges, thaw the portion out that I want, and use a little food processor. It gets the food into little chunks but not pureed and Andrew loved it because he could eat it with his hands without it being a choking hazard. Very easy.
As for fruit, I would buy frozen fruit, thaw out the meal portion in the microwave, and cut it into bite-size chunks so he didn't choke. He loved to pick up the pieces and feed himself.
For meat, Jim would bake or saute a chicken breast and cut it into bite-size pieces. I put them into portion-sized tupperware containers and froze them. One piece of chicken went a long way.
I never did make my own purees because, as I said, I found the store-bought purees to fit what we needed. I did enjoy making his food once he was done with the purees, though.
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