Homemade Baby Food

With both of my oldest children I bought commercial baby food for them. I thought nothing of it, it was convenient and at the time my husband and I both were working full-time outside of the house. It has been close to 4 years since I had anything to do with baby food, so when I got pregnant with our yongest I had some research to do. In the past 4 years there has been an abundance of information on organic food and the best options for baby. Since our family is choosing to live a green lifestyle I wanted to do what was the best fit into our lives. So hands down I knew I wanted to make our baby food. I have to cook for my oldest 2, so making baby food wasn't hard at all! I found an amazing website, http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/, which has so much information on it about making baby food, when to introduce what foods, and even recipes as baby grows. This website has been a great resource to always go back to.

Our middle child has always been a sick child. We have been through ear tubes at 14 months, tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy at 2 years old, she was diagnosed with urinary reflux at 4 years and now finally we have her healthy! Because we have been through so much I have researched a lot on natural remedies and preventions so we never have to go through all this again. As I was researching homemade baby food I came across information about waiting to introduce baby food until baby was older. This helps prevent allergies later in life. Of course I jumped on this idea and waited until my son was almost 7 months before we started him on any food. Because of all the medical issues we have had in the past I also wanted to make sure we were only introducing the most nutritious and healthiest options to our son. We only buy organic fruits and vegetables to make his food. I buy them in season and when the produce is on sale. I steam everything first and then puree (now we are at the dicing stage though) and then freeze everything. Because we freeze everything I am able to bulk up when produce goes on sale. I look back now and think about how much money I spent on commercial baby food with my oldest two and it's kind of scary! Not only was I feeding them watered down, over processed food but I spent a fortune on it! By spending 3 hours every 2 weeks in the kitchen peeling, cutting up, steaming, pureeing, and freezing fruits and vegetables I am saving a ton of cash! What a win win option for us...healthy food and extra money!

I am no expert on making homemade baby food, in fact I am still learning everyday, but I do have a few tips that I have picked up the past couple of months. I buy a bunch of bananas when they are on sale and I let them sit on the counter for a few days until they are ripe, maybe a little over. Then I unpeel the bananas and I wrap each banana seperatly in plastic wrap (yes, we still use that in my house). I put the wrapped bananas in the freezer, and when I am ready to use one I take it out. They are easy to cut up when frozen and with a dash of formula it will puree to a smooth cream (kind of looks like icecream). Then I place the pureed bananas in a glass bowl and mircowave for about 20 seconds. They will get watery but then just add a dash of rice cereal. This way you don't have to puree the bananas and have them sit forever, they don't get that strong banana smell and baby will love them!

I have learned from experience that peas and green beans don't puree very well. You have to add a ton of cooking water. Because I waited so long to start my son on food he was almost at the age where he could pick it up. So because of this I waited to introduce peas and green beans until he could feed them himself and chew them up.

Natural, homemade baby food tastes different then conventional baby food because it is missing all those perservatives. Because of this introducing new foods to baby may not be a good experience. I started with my son to add the new food to his cereal. Each new food was added to his cereal about 3 times before I fed it to him alone for the first time. Rice cereal seems to always be baby's first food, so they tend to like the taste and enjoy eating it. So distorting the taste is ok, they learn to like that new taste and will eventually eat it alone!