Back on the Baby Food Wagon

After so many road trips and camping excursions this past month or two I had gotten pretty lax about making baby food and had resorted to buying Gerber or Target brands all the time. But after a couple attempts at feeding Benjamin the nastiness that is baby food "meat," even mixed in with vegetables to try and mask the horrific smell, I was once again motivated to make my own baby food. So I got out my trusty book (which I would highly recommend to any of you in the market), and came up with some recipes that would allow me to blend meats and veggies together so I have a variety of combos in the freezer. Gotta get all those vitamins in. Meat and frozen veggies aren't too hard to come by and can be picked up on sale (it helps to have a big freezer in your garage) but fruit wasn't as obvious. You can get frozen peaches but they're usually not very cheap and they aren't all that good. Since I canned all of our fresh peaches, I opted for canned peaches and pears (industrial size). They are packaged in light syrup, but since fruit is mostly sugar anyway I figure the difference isn't too much and I rinse off the fruit before blending. Over the weekend I bought a couple of huge cans at Costco and figured out that they make sixteen 4 oz. servings, which saves me about 20 cents per serving. Unsweetened applesauce in regular containers from Walmart is even better, saving about 30 cents per serving and you don't even have to do anything to it! The best way I have found of freezing it is to portion out half-cup servings into the small rainbow colored semi-disposable bowls sold in every store in America with a baby section (can't remember the brand) and then, once frozen, dump them into freezer ziplock bags. When you're ready to use them, put them back into a bowl, snap on the lid, and thaw in the fridge at least a day ahead of time. I usually put them in the microwave for 20 seconds or so to cut the chill, then it's ready to serve!


Another tool I bought recently is a 3-cup processer (Black and Decker EHC650). It's main purpose in our house will be to process small quantities of our dinner for Benjamin as he's able to eat more things and in bigger chunks. So far it has worked great and there aren't nearly as many pieces to clean as my food processor or blender.

Besides my sturdy blender, my favorite baby food making appliance is my Oster steamer. I always forget to use it when cooking our dinners, but it's been so nice to have for baby food.

Those are all of my baby food tips for now. Sorry for boring all of you non-mothers of babies, but hopefully it's been helpful to someone. I wish I would have known some of these shortcuts starting out for the first time. Happy blending!