Making Your Own Baby Food? - Irving,TX

I enjoyed making my own baby food. The benefits are amazing (cost savings are substantial), less waste (1 oz of food vs. a whole jar), plus you get more variety.

This is a "How To" I posted on my blog back in the day. Good luck! This is an exciting time in your life.

How to Make Homemade Baby Food

First Foods
Bananas and avocado
Use really ripe fruit, (brown spots are good).
Mash well with a fork or use the grinder.
Add enough liquid (formula, water or breast milk) to your desired consistency.

Try avocado, it’s got heart healthy fats and is great for brain development!

Purees
Ideas include: Mango, pears, apples, peaches, nectarines, plums, carrots, peppers, meat, all types of squash, zucchini, green beans, broccoli, cauliflower, peas and sweet potatoes.

Peel (no need to peel yellow squash or zucchini)

Cut into chunks

Steam until soft (I have a wonderful vegetable steamer)

Puree in a blender. Use liquid (breast milk, water, formula or broth {for meat}) to get your desired consistency.

Place puree into ice cube trays.

One cube = about an ounce.

When frozen, place cubes into labeled Ziploc freezer bags.

Take out however many cubes you need for the day and let them defrost.

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Introducing foods under the age of 1 is just to teach to chew and swallow chunky food. It is NOT for a nutritional boost. Babies get 100% of their nutrition from breastmilk and formula. They don't "need" other food.

You can follow the instructions on the side of the Gerber or Del Monte rice cereal boxes. They recommend that babies get a soupy spoonful starting around ages 6-7 months.

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Making your own baby food is super easy and honestly, REALLY helps with the transition to regular food. I did homemade baby food for my first child and he is a great eater. I took the "easy way out" and bought baby food for my 2nd child and I regret it to this day.

Buy a couple of books on the subject - Super Baby foods is great because it tells you which ones are "super" (highly nutritious) and it helps you with when to introduce which ones. There are also a couple of other books out there that go over feeding your child through the toddler stages with good ideas for foods.

Good luck!
L.

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www.wholesomebabyfood.com You will find all the answers to your questions there. Easy website to find all the info you need on all fruits, veggies, grains, dairy & meat. Go check it out.

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There's a great website -- wholesomebabyfood.com
I used that as a guide - there were times I'd think they were crazy - like when to introduce blueberries - but sure enough my girls loved them and they weren't a choking hazard. (I always "gummed" things I wasn't sure about before giving it to them.)

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I agree with Karen, just cook things very soft and mush it up well. You can use a food processor, or just a fork, but get it really smooth for a little one just starting out.

You don't say how old your daughter is. If she is 4 to 6 months, you can start with rice cereal. It is really one of the lowest allergen foods and is pretty easy for babies to digest. If you don't want to use premade rice cereal, you can make your own by putting uncooked rice in the blender and grinding it to a powder. Then just mix it with hot water to a smooth consistency, allow to cool to a nice warm eating temperature and serve.

At 6 months you can start with more foods. Always wait 3 days or more between any new foods to check for allergies/sensitivities. Soft fruits don't need to be cooked. Bananas, pears, peaches, etc. all can be mushed up and eaten with no cooking. Other good choices are mashed potatoes (regular or sweet potatoes), apple sauce (unsweetened), oatmeal, any veggie cooked soft and mushed well.

You can take any food you cook for her and pour it into ice cube trays to freeze. Once they are frozen, store them in ziplock bags in the freezer. An ice cube size is a good amount for one serving and can easily be warmed up and ready to go.

Have fun!

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I have not read other responses so not sure if someone already mentioned this but a great site is Wholesome Baby, here is the link:

http://wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com/index.htm

Everything you need to know about what to feed, when to introduce it, how to make it and how to store it, including recipes is on this site.

Good Luck

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Making baby food is simple. Take your regular food, cooked soft. Mush it up with a fork.

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http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com is a great reference

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Do not buy any fancy gadgets or the machines for $150. I just used a stick blender. I didn't have one already so that was $30. And I bought Baby Cubes: http://www.buybuybaby.com/product.asp?SKU=15154047&
I think this is the easiest and cheapest way, unless you just mash it with a fork like they did in the olden days.

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I used to boil my childrens meat with two kinds of veggies, weather it was 2 carrots with potato or zucchini with potato (potato tends to smooth out the meat so the child doesn't have to taste the strange string like feeling in his mouth). Also add plenty(two teaspoons) of olive oil after the food has been boiled. Besides the fact that it's healthy, pooping bcomes easier for baby. I would blend it all and save for a day or two. I did the same with chicken, and lamb. Kids loved it and it all tasted good together. Some moms seperate the veggies from the meat so babies could have an idea of how each food tastes individually, but I wanted them to have a smooth bowel movement at least everyday, I didn't want them to develop picky eating habbits. That's from my perspective. Wishing you well and good eating!

1 mom found this helpful

I made my own food for my daughter and now I am making it for my son. With my daughter I bought one of the kits because I was intimidated, but all you do is steam and puree. I follow the guidelines from a baby food cookbook, So Easy Baby Food, to know which foods to introduce when. I also have freezer trays to save some for later. My pedi directed us to wholesomebabyfood.com also. Hope it helps!

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Making baby food is so easy. There are so many products and gadgets it can be a bit overwhelming but it doesn't need to be (and you don't need all that stuff either). The first food we started out with was bananas at around 6 months...just take a really soft banana and squish it with a fork and give it to her, really that simple. Other fruit and veggies we cooked were sweet potatoes, apples, mangos (wait until older for this though), carrotts, zucchini and squash...anything that will cook down real easy. I would throw these into the crockpot in the morning and let them cook down to mush (when she was real young and no teeth) and when she got older and started to feed herself we would just cut them up into tiny bite size pieces and cook until soft. We just stored in ziploc bags in the freezer and microwave when she got hungry.

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I'm a fan of Annabel Karmel's books. The first I purchased was her Top 100 Purees. I bought this when my daughter was 6 months old. She offers a variety of recipes and tips on preparing/freezing different foods. It also gave me ideas on putting different flavor combinations together. When my daughter was a little older I bought her First Meals book. What I like about that book is that it breaks down recipes by different age ranges and offers suggestions on incorporating a variety of healthy foods for your child and gives you many more options so you aren't cooking the same thing over and over. My daughter is now 3 and we still use that cookbook - there are recipes in there that my whole family enjoys.

But for the first foods I started out with more vegetables than fruits as I read that they could develop a taste for the "sweet" in fruits and not like to eat vegetables if you start them on fruits first. But that is just a personal preference. Also as others suggested wait at least 3 days after trying a new food before trying something else to make sure there are no food allergies. I do know that I tried to offer my daughter as many different foods as possible during these past 3 years and today she very willingly eats almost every vegetable and fruit offered to her.

My pediatrician offered guidelines as when to start new foods - 6 months vegetables/fruits/rice cereal. And at nine months it was meat/eggs and by a year old it was pretty much everything else. Good luck!

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I would take foods that I cooked in the house like pot roast or chicken noodle soup or spaghetti and use the food processor. I used breastmilk to help "thin" it out as needed. I placed the prepared food into an ice cube tray and cover it with saran wrap to freeze, once frozen I would individually wrap those "cubes" of food then put them in a freezer baggie. I would as needed pull the foods down and put each cube in a small tupperware to thaw. Beware to only give new foods in a controlled environment - only introduce one new food a week, give the body time to confirm it likes that food item. Once kiddo was happy with beef, broth, carrots, celery, potatoe etc is when he would get pot roast!

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Your pediatrician should have a list of when to introduce foods. Beyond that, my daughter only ate baby food from 6-9 months. After that, she ate what we ate, with some changes made for her protein. She didn't have any teeth until she was over a year old. Her dr. told me the reason to feed them baby food to a point was to make sure they weren't allergic. Once that's established, they can eat off the table.

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