Making My Own Baby Food

There are two main priorities that I consider when deciding how to do things in our home:

1. What is best for our babies?
2. How can I save our family money?

When considering both of these thing, it became clear that I want to make baby food for our babies.  Homemade baby food is definitely cheaper than buying jars at a grocery store.  Moreover, it is nutritionally superior to processed foods, and I can be absolutely certain of what I'm feeding to Miles and Vivienne. 

To get started, I read a couple books on making baby food, including Ruth Yaron's book, Super Baby Food.

First off, this is a gigantic book, almost 600 pages.  When the package came, it felt like a brick.  That was overwhelming.  But you really don't have to read every page to get the necessary information, and it has tons of recipes that you can use up throughout your child's young life.

Basically, to make your own baby food, you cook the vegetable/fruit (bake, steam or boil) and then puree it using a food processor, food grinder or blender.  To save time, you can make large batches and then freeze the food in ice cube trays (which are about 1 oz per cube, perfect portions for babies).  After the food has frozen, store it in large freezer bags. 

When you're ready to serve the food, simply pull out a cube, defrost it (in the refrigerator if you have time or the microwave or hot water bath if you don't have as much time), mix it with breast milk or formula (if you need it to be thinner for younger babies), and serve.  Following this method, it really only takes a couple of hours a week.

My Sweet Potatoes Before Freezing

Last night, I made a huge batch of sweet potatoes.  I bought a bag of sweet potatoes at Aldi, baked them all, pureed them and put them into trays.  Next time, I'm going to find some organic sweet potatoes, because they are one of the dirty dozen. 

I'm looking forward to cooking lots of homemade fruits and veggies for my sweet Miles and Vivienne.