Making My Own Baby Food

When Adeline began curiously eying up my food during dinner time I knew it was time to begin the transition to solids.  I was in no hurry to rush her into this but at around  5 1/2 – 6 months she was ready.  For the first two weeks we started with a few spoons of rice cereal for breakfast.  This slowly progressed to more and more.  She was still a 100%  breastfed baby so I only supplemented the breast milk with food, not replaced.

So then we were ready for the next step in “solids.”  I really didn’t put much thought into this and just assumed we were going to go to the grocery store and buy our cute little “stage 1″ baby jars and get started.  But as I went to the grocery store and saw these jars with yucky looking mushed up bananas and carrots with expiration dates 3 years out…I thought, how hard could this be to do on my own and have it fresh, organic and know exactly whats going into my baby’s body? It all of a sudden just sounded so much more appealing.  I decided I was going to try and be that “#1 mom” and attempt to make my own baby food.  I figured that if I could do this breastfeeding thing and keep it up for so long, I might as well try and continue the healthy pattern.

My plan was to get her used to vegetables first and then fruit, I hear this is the way to go so they learn to like vegetables. My husband got me the coolest little gadget to assist me with this process – Beaba Babycook Baby Food Maker I absolutely love this thing. I can only speak from my personal experience but the baby cook has made it all quick, easy and fun for me. It has this great feature where you can steam (cook) the food and puree it in the same compartment. Doesn’t take long to do and cleaning it is a breeze.

I started out with pureed carrots, broccoli, butternut squash, peas, etc. One batch would make approximately 3-4 servings (more in the beginning when they don’t eat too much). I would split it into small portions and freeze until needed. I found these great plastic containers that were the perfect size, freezer/microwave/dishwasher safe, BPA free and it was easy to pop out frozen portions – The First Years Take and Toss Bowls with Lids by Learning Curve (I purchased in Babies-R-Us, under $4 for a pack of 7). I would place a mini post-it on it with date/label and throw in the freezer.

After “first” tastes I introduced a variety of vegetable and fruit combinations. Adeline got to try a little bit of everything, depending on what mom and dad were having for dinner! If we had salmon I would just leave a piece unseasoned, bake it and puree it with some steamed carrots and cheese.  Top 100 Baby Purees: 100 Quick and Easy Meals for a Healthy and Happy Baby – this is a great book that categorizes food into stages and gives you many ideas. Seriously, this whole process was so much easier than I thought it would be!!   I strongly believe that having fresh foods introduced early on has helped my girl transition to healthy finger foods with no problem.  Now she’s eating the same things she was in the beginning, just in small pieces instead of pureed. She will happily (so far anyways) eat her broccoli, corn, peas, carrots, strawberries, bananas, etc.   AND my baby cook still continues to get good use for steaming vegetables and apples.   I’m not going to lie, if this process led to a lot more dishes and clean up, I probably would have given up..but it was SO much easier then I thought it would be (with my little baby cook) and it’s so good for her…  if your thinking about it, I definitely encourage you to try it!

day 1 – “what is this?? uck!!” day 2 – “uggh, again? maybe” day 3 – “I love my carrots!”