Making Baby Food - Liberty,MO

I use the Beaba Babycook and it's fantastic. It steams the food then you can use it as a blender and then it can also be used to defrost the food. I only have one item to clean when I am done. I also freeze it in ice cube trays or there are trays made especially for freezing baby food. I live in a country where baby food is hard to come by so this has been a lifesaver. I make up my own receipes and my little one loves all the fresh food.

I have made all of my daughter's baby food since she started eating solids. I never used a book or recipes, just made my own versions of what the store-bought foods offered, plus some things they don't. The basics are all the same: orange veggies, green veggies, fruits and meats. I made large batches of each individual food as I introduced it, pureed it and then froze it in ice-cube trays and store the cubes in baggies in my freezer. Now that my daughter is older, I can make any combination I think would taste good just by mixing cubes and I'm not limited in the variety I'm able to offer her (lamb, spinach and spaghetti squash one night, bison, sweet potatoes and apples the next). Portion sizes are easy to adjust this way also, as each cube is equal to about an ounce of food, so you can just make more as the baby gets bigger. Now that I want to add texture to her foods, I plan on making small batches of rice and tiny pastas that I can add to the purees during heating.
As for how to cook each food, I baked the squashes and sweet potatoes (watch they don't get TOO carmelized), boiled apples, pears, potatoes and green beans until soft and steamed spinach and anything else I could. For the meats, I started with ground, all natural meats and just made sure I cooked them all the way through before pureeing. I used my food processor mostly, adding water only when necessary to get a smooth puree. Tough things with skin, like corn and peas, need a food mill or a very patient, strong arm to push them through a strainer.
I've had a lot of fun making my baby's food and being able to offer her variety. While it may not look much better, my food definitely tastes better than the jars. Good luck and enjoy watching your baby grow!

Hi Susan -
We made all of my daughter's baby food and are so happy we did! It is so easy!!! Tools needed - a steaming basket or pot and a sieve with pretty small holes. That's about it!
We would get whatever looked good at the grocery store or farmer's market. We did a lot of sweet potatoes and yams, potatoes, squash, peas (although those were a little trickier). We would also do fruits, however for the most part they didn't need to be steamed.
Just steam them until really soft and then push them through the sieve. Our friends gave us these really great 1 oz. individual serving cups that would go right into the fridge/freezer.
You can make a week, two weeks, month worth of food on the weekend and then refrigerate/freeze as appropriate. You always know exactly what they're getting!
Great choice!! Good Luck!

Well, due to the fact that I didn't know anything about babies when I had my first, didn't know when and what foods to start feeding, I had to use the books. I found a great book http://www.superbabyfood.com/ see website if interested. It pretty much covers what others below are suggesting, but adds really good nutritional info easy to follow and easy to read. I was blending everything from avocados to cooked chicken w/sweet potatoes. It also lets you know dangers of not cooking certain foods while others you can just mash up. If microwaving use glass dishes. I only had to make baby food once a month then, freeze. My final suggestion is get a good hand/immersion blender with combo food processor. For me this was easier to clean then a regular blender and worked better for the hard to blend veggies such as broccoli and asparagus. A hand blender can get these kinds of veggies really smooth.

I made all my own baby food. Starting out just steam a bag of frozen (or fresh) veggies and put them in a blender (beware peas because of the hard skins - might need a food grinder at first). I used ice cube trays to freeze batches and then could thaw 2-3 cubes at a time for meals. You can work up to doing all sorts of combo meals with meat and veggies. I used "Feed Me I'm Yours" by Karmel (?) as a jumping-off point and then I would just make up my own concoctions - like brown cubes of chicken and then add frozen stew veggies and some water and simmer on the stove until everything is soft. It is cheap and everything looks, tastes, and smells so much better than the processed stuff. My kids transitioned to real food very easily and are still great eaters at 5 and 3.

I had a book called So Easy Baby food or something like that. It was a good guide for cooking times etc and gave some good suggestions for combinations of foods. You can freeze the food in ice cube trays and then transfer them to plastic freezer bags for convienance. A little goes a long way when your baby doesn't eat much at first!

I did similar to a previous post. I used a food grinder (cheap one I pd less than $10 for). My kids just flat out did not like baby food. With the first, I stuck to fruits & vegetables. I used frozen veggies, as they are healthier than canned. I would just cook them, grind them, & freeze in ice cube trays, once frozen, removed & placed in freezer bags. I made certain I peeled all fruits before grinding. My youngest would eat anything I could put into the grinder. Some of the things included, vegetable soup, cheerios with a little milk, rice with a little gravy, I'd grind up oatmeal (so it was even finer) & make regular oatmeal. He wanted whatever we were eating, so I would do what I could to grind up what we had (he only had two teeth) & judged the texture according to what I thought would be safe & I couldn't feed him fast enough. Enjoy...I do believe ding it yourself is probably healthier & definitely cheaper!

I too enjoyed the book Super Baby food. I used a steamer (a shallow pot that you put water in with another pot on top that has holes in it & a lid), a food processer & ice cube trays (to freeze the baby food into nice portions).

God bless!

When baby starts to eat bigger portions, you can freeze the food in muffin tins. When my kids were able to eat soft meatloaf, I made mini ones in the muffin tins...homemade chicken soup, too. So fun!

It is really easy to make your baby foods as you go to.. that's what i did with 3 of my 4 girls... i simply bought one of those hand stick mixer thingys.. and simple boiled or steamed all of my veggies i fed them and used the stick mixer on them.. it pureed them.. when they got older i pureed them less by using the mixer on them for less time. and as they got older started only using a fork to mush them.. if i wanted to add in meat the hand stick mixer worked a charm on it as well.

Here are some of the "winning combos" that my sons really enjoyed:

Pears and sweet pototoes or squash
Carrots and any fruit
Beef stew (beef, carrots, potatoes)
Mixed veggies (carrots, lima beans, corn, green beans, etc)

We used fresh as much as we could, but we also steamed frozen veggies and pureed those. In a pinch, we would open a can of mixed veggies, puree those (no steaming or cooking required), and give them to our son. We bought veggies with no added salt. Sometimes we would experiment with spices, but mostly we gave him plain food. And he's still a great eater!

Using ice cube trays is a great idea. Once the baby food is frozen, you can pop the food out and store it in freezer bags so you can again use your ice cube trays.

I too did the steam in the microwave and puree in the blender method. It's super easy and much more economical! I bought a fancy baby food book but honestly never used it. The ice trays worked like a charm! After they froze I would pop them out and then put them in freezer ziplocks, that way I could just take out the ones I needed. They defrost in the microwave in like 30 seconds or less. Plus, it's handy when you have to be on the go...you can put a few frozen cubes in a bowl and by the time you're ready for lunch...viola! They're thawed and ready to eat. You can also buy frozen vegetables if you like because they are often cheaper and have the same (if not better, depending upon the season) nutritional value as fresh. I did a mixture of both. But, don't forget to "cheat" on things like natural applesauce and cans of pureed pumpkin...they are just as healthy and you don't have to make them! Also, remember to steam, not boil. Boiling takes out most of the nutrients of the food. Good luck!

When I was pregnant with my 1st child, my sister bought me the book "Mommy Made" Home cooking for a Healthy Baby & TOddler by Martha andDavid Kimmel. We have both used it soooooo much.
It gives a chart when it's best to introduce which foods (and why, and what to avoid).
It describes the best way to prepare (puree, chop &/or cook) each item.
I mainly made a large batch, then froze it in ice cube trays (so it made 1 oz servings), then packed the ice cubes in freezer bags or containers. When time to eat, heated them in a coffee mug. Also could just pack them & let thaw for a picnic. When they got older, just took several ice cubes & mixed to make meals (eg;1 pasta, 1 meat, 2 veggies & a tomato sauce).
The book also has a section in the back how to progress these purees into older baby meals & toddler foods.
My kids are 4 & 6, we still use it :-)
I have seen it in our local library, maybe you would like to check it out before buying?
I enjoyed homemade baby food soooo much better; as they transitioned to regular people food, it was perfectly normal because it had the same taste. Commercial baby food is made to taste so much sweeter....
Best of luck!

Well mostly I did vegtables by cutting them up and putting them in the blender. I never did the fruit since my daughter would eat the premade fruit just not so much of the vegtables or meat. Something I did that they say not to is add any kind of spice but if it was bland my daughter wouldn't eat it at all. One combo that I bought at the store she actually liked was sweet potatoes and carrots. of which neither of us likes.so if there ar stuff you don't like but want your child to eat try a small portion first then later add more.

Good for you!!! It is SO easy to get started. First, I'll send you a website of a friend that has done EXTENSIVE research on feeding babies and is my personal guru on the subject. It is her blog called CUTIE PATOOTIE FOODIE -- adorable isn't it?! She's the mom of three, two girls and now a bouncing baby boy to add to her clan. Look at her OCTOBER entries that list the baby food introduction chart (researched and pediatrician endorsed).

http://cutiepatootiefoodie.blogspot.com/2009_10_01_archiv...

Basically you just steam fruit and veggies (think of natural combos or even cruise the baby food aisle for ideas) and put them in a food processor or blender. Then put them in ice cube trays and freeze immediately (unless you want to save a portion to feed that day. Cover the ice cube trays with press and seal, let them freeze. Next transfer them to a freezer baggie, label them with the date they were made and the contents and you're in business!!

There are lots of books out there, and I think one that I have is called Top 100 Baby Purees, Super Foods for Babies and Children. I also like Deceptively Delicious for older kids, and once you get the hang of making purees, you won't need any books.

The great thing about making your own purees is that you can also make your own custom mixes. Just use two to three "cubes" and that is a pretty good portion for an infant. My babies also love yogurt and soft cereals (even malt-o-meal or cream of wheat is perfectly fine for babies). Yo Baby is great, however it is VERY thin and runs a lot, so use a bib or even thicken it with a bit of baby cereal.

Have fun!!! Oh and one thing that my youngest loved as a baby was when I took a bag of frozen veggies or fruit and dropped it on the counter to break up the pieces--it left him giggling for a long time!

KW