Baby Food: Make It Yourself

This blog entry was a bit daunting to write (which explains why it is Thursday and I have yet to post this) because feeding your baby solid food is one of those tasks that every parent approaches in the way that simply works well for them.  So I will not try to persuade but will just share how much we have enjoyed making C’s baby food since he started to eat solids.  He has on occasion eaten jarred baby food, but on the whole we make his baby food and have decided that it doesn’t take much time out of our day or preclude us from going out and about around meal time.

Before I had even thought about having children, I remember a conversation years ago when a friend mentioned how she was going to be one of those parents who made all of her children’s baby food.  At the time I remember thinking, “now that is going overboard!”  Years later, I am doing just that and realizing that it is easy to do and certainly less expensive then spending a dollar on each jar of baby food or more, if you choose to buy organic.

I received a baby puree book for a baby shower gift, Top 100 Baby Purees, and was intrigued by the number of combinations recommended for baby food purees and by how simple the process seemed.  Early on, when the baby only eats one type of solid food a day like green peas, bananas, carrots or sweet potato, all you had to do was puree the food to the consistency of a jar of baby food.  This took a bit of practice.  I realized that often you needed to puree the baby food first and then slowly add a few tablespoons of water until it was smooth enough for the baby to tolerate.  Often potato and later cheese became consistent additions to smooth out the texture of the baby food.  I discovered sweet potato went well with apple and banana and avocado was a good pairing, much to my mother’s disbelief, but the baby gobbled it down.  Applesauce out of the jar was also a simple puree addition in order to add a bit of smoothness and tartness to otherwise bland vegetables.

For my pureeing device, I ordered a Cuisinart Mini Prep Plus for $40.  I was enticed by the much more expensive Williams and Sonoma, Beaba Babycook which defrosts, steams and purees all in one device.  But I quickly realized that I was rarely defrosting after a few months of making baby food.  Instead I would cook two days worth and keep it thawed in the refrigerator or plan ahead and take the frozen food out of the freezer in advance.  The Cuisinart proved powerful yet tiny enough to fit on my small kitchen counter and the microwave was efficient for quickly steaming foods.

It was a surprise to me that it is unnecessary to boil vegetables on the road to pureeing them.  My friend Kim clued me in early on that steaming vegetables in the microwave rather than boiling them the long and traditional way worked just as well and was much, much quicker.  All I had to do was cook the vegetables in the microwave on high for 7+ minutes covered with water in a pyrex container.  It was a miracle.  The veggies came out cooked and ready to puree.  Even a raw egg, I learned from Kim much later, could be cooked in the microwave on high for about two minutes.  Then add cheese, tomato or any other item that compliments it well and you have scrambled egg for the baby!  I even started eating a protein breakfast of microwaved scrambled egg more regularly because it only takes a minute or two and tastes pretty similar to the real thing.

For baby food storage we use some remarkable containers called, Babycubes, that let us efficiently store or travel with the baby food.  I recently gave my friend Jessica, who is due in January, a set of these cubes.  They are about double the size of an ice cube and have an attached lid.  This way you can freeze the food with the lid on or simply store in the refrigerator.  More recently the cubes have come in handy for holding snack food like raisins or cubes of cheese.

Now we are just about at the tail end of having to make C’s baby food and thankfully he has expanded the tastes and textures he tolerates to eat a portion of what we cook for ourselves for lunch or dinner.  But I will certainly be getting my money’s worth out of the mini prep.  Now I use it to dice my garlic or onions instead of dragging out the enormous full size Cuisinart!

Mini Prep:

Babycubes:

http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Cubes-Contains-Phthalates-Bisphenol/dp/B0027DYWS4/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=baby-products&qid=1257821033&sr=8-4