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Food & Nutrition
Rseed
member
Anyone make their own baby food?!
Rseed
member
I've always wanted to make my baby's food, as I'm really into clean and healthy eating. Is it costly or a lot of work?? Anyone with experience?
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Re: Anyone make their own baby food?!
I'm on my second week of making my 6mo his own food. We started out with peas, and I just made a batch of carrots.
I bought a bag of fresh carrots, $.99, cut them up into little coin sizes, steamed them in our pasta pot (an amazing steamer), then while hot, blended them in the blender with added water until a smooth consistency. I then took that mixture poured it into an ice cube tray. I will wait till they are frozen, then transfer the cubes into freezer save zip top bags. The night before, I will take out two cubes, and put them in a little bowl, cover them and put them in the fridge. By his 2pm feeding, they are thawed out and ready to eat! It seems to be working find so far, I'm so happy I can do this for my son. Oh, and all in all, it maybe takes 30 mins tops from prep to putting the trays in the freezer. I get about 20 1oz cubes from that bag of carrots, can't remember how many were in there, maybe 6 nice sized ones?
I was going to go all out on baby bullet blenders and OXO steamer baskets, but I found that the pots and appliances I had at home worked just as well.
If you don't mind me asking, did you breastfeed at all? If so, are you stopping at 6 months to feed him the food you're making, or do you do both? I ask because I'm a first time Mom, and there are no young children in my family so I wouldn't know otherwise from experience!
That seems pretty easy to do and practical, if you ask me, to use your own appliances and supplies. I have all of those things, as I love to cook, so I'm glad I asked! I definitely would have felt the need to go out and buy all of those baby food machines!
FTM here too. I did BF for 2 months when he was first born, then my supply dropped, and I was having PPD issue, not a good time, so we had to switch over to FF. I still give him about 4 bottles a day, he drinks 5-8oz per, depends...seems like his formula intake has fallen after his 6 month growth spurt.
But yeah, making your own baby food is easy, cheaper, and if you love to cook (like me
then you will enjoy it 
I could never understand why you would want to buy those expensive little jars of pureed carrots, when it is so easy to just make your own pureed carrots!
I did the same thing that Miles described, with all kinds of veggies and fruits. With a lot of fruits, you don't even need the blender, you can just fork-mash them (bananas, avocados, peaches). I drew the line at pureed meats, though. DD was a vegetarian until she was big enough for finger foods! I also roasted squash, sweet potatoes and some other veggies (roasting gives them a nice flavor, more than steaming, I think), I baked sweet potatoes a lot too, and then just peeled off the skin and mashed them with a potato masher. No special tools required at all.
I would spend some time to make a few batches of different veggies and get them frozen, and they would last for quite a while before I had to do it again. The puree phase was pretty short in our house, actually, and I wound up using some of the puree cubes that I had frozen as pasta sauces or dips for finger foods.
My other tip for making your own food is to not season it when you puree and freeze it, but add different seasonings when you thaw it out and serve it - that way you can try various seasonings to see what your LO likes or doesn't like without having a whole batch of curry peas only to find out that LO hates curry, KWIM?
And I still use the ice cube tray freezing method for DH's homemade applesauce, leftover mashed potatoes, or anything else squishy like that. It's so convenient to be able to just thaw out enough for one meal!
This. I can't think of anything cheaper/easier/healthier. I made my son's food because he was eating exactly what DH and I were eating. I didn't have to buy jars of food, or spend any time steaming/pureeing.