Does any one have any good natural home made baby food recipes? I'd like to experiment.
I just steamed veggies (until very soft- kinda over-done) or baked sweet potatoes and put them in a blender with a little water and froze them in ice cube trays. I put them in ziplock bags wit the date, etc. I would take a cube and put it in a large babyfood jar to defrost and take with us if we were on the go. Very easy! I never had a recipe book.
Check out www.wholesomebabyfood.com and www.weelicious.com (hover over the recipes button and you can select age groups.)
I used Fresh Baby So Easy Cookbook when my boys were little. It is super easy. The basic idea is cook the fruit/veggie (can even be done in the microwave-less loss of nutirents) then add a little water and puree. Couldn't be more simple.
You don't need a recipe. Just steam vegies or fruit until they are very soft. Then, depending on the age of baby, either mash or put through the blender with a little water (add bit by bit until you get the texture you like). That's it.
HTH
T.
You don't really need a recipe...I made home made food for all of my children...you can start out with steamed veggies...put them through a food blender, add a small amount of water if you need to...to get them to the proper consistancy. If your child is old enough to be eating meat, cook a small roast ( with as little fat as possible) in water, just like you would for yourself, (minus the seasoning of course). Use the water that you cooked the roast in, to add liquid to the roast as you blend it along with the veggies in a food blender. I always fixed enough to freeze a dozen or so meals and then just heated them up as I needed them each day.
I never did prepare home made fruits...it just wasn't economically sensible.
I have a small "rocket blender" made for smoothies..small and fits in a drawer. I do baby food for my daycare children for a few years now. Fridays are what I call "must go" day (everything must go before the weekend!). Whatevers left in the fruit bowl that can make baby food, I do up on Fridays. Banana, bluberries, strawberries, pears, peaches. I will also batch prepare from canned or frozen fruits and veggies.
Fresh veggies I do arecarrots, brocolli, squash, sweet potatoes, zuchinni (I usually have one or 2 leftover, so I will mix with carrots), avacados (my babies almost always LOVE avacados, so I look for them to be on sale). Green beans and peas I often do from canned or frozen. Spinach too (I have one baby now who loves anything green!!!)
I steam or bake..or use the canned or frozen....puree them with nothing but a bit of water for consistency..hen put into ice cube trays and cover with wax paper or plastic wrap overnight...pop into freezer bags labeled with the date and what it is. Easy peasy!
I never do meat. Baby cereal meets my USDA required protein item for my Food Program service in daycare. Mine are off baby food by 12 mos latest.
Good luck!
One of my daughter's favorites was this:
1 avocado
2 free range egg yollks, from hard-boiled eggs (not the whites)
1 banana
Process in a food processor or blender.
Pot Roast with potatoes and veggies makes a great baby food.
Chicken, brown rice, kale and peas.
Homemade baby food is great because you can't buy avocado baby food which provides a really healthy fat - or kale baby food. My daughter was underweight so the avocado one was one I fed her often. Just make sure to avoid carrots, there is a chemical in it that gets concentrated through home methods that commercial methods can avoid.
Get a steamer basket and buy fresh veggies and steam them still they are really soft then you can mash them up. When my daughter switched to table foods I would steam brocolli, carrots, squash and zuchini for her and she loved it. She loved being able to feed herself so they were perfect!
when blending or pureeing bananas or pears (or any fruit that you want to stay "pretty") add a pinch of powdered vitamin c. It will keep the fruit from turning brown.
Check out the book "Top 100 Baby Purees" by Annabel Karmel. I make all my babyfood from recipes in that book. It has recipes from beginning feeding all the way to 12 months and beyond.
I tried a lot of the recipes from www.wholesomebabyfood.com. Both my sons really liked them. Making baby food is easier than you think, especially if you have a good blender or food processor. Good Luck! The banana teething biscuits are great! They're more like cookies, but they're really good.
