Homemade Baby Food

I wanted to share my recent adventure into homemade baby food. When Sevea was eating baby food we just went the quick route and purchased baby food from the store. Well now that I do daycare I toyed with the idea of making homemade baby food. My decision was made for me when the infant I care for parents stated that they made her baby food and if I was going to purchase the baby food they would bring food they made at home. She told me how easy it was and I agreed to give it a shot. Boy am I glad I did. You save money and it doesn't require much work at all. I am really surprised at how easy it is. It is also nice that you have many more options to give your child. Any produce you see at the store can pretty much be made into baby food not to mention when they get to the next stage when you can give them your leftover spaghetti!!

Let's take a photo step-by-step of the process. There is no need for any fancy baby food making kit. All you need is a way to steam/bake/soften the produce and a way to grind it up. Then an ice cube tray to freeze and containers/ziplocks to store. This batch was apples.

Steam the veggie or fruit

Once soft place in the food processor and blend. Add water if necessary or water can be added later when feeding to reach the desired consistency you want.

Once the desired consistency pour into ice cube trays.

Put ice cube trays into freezer until it has froze

Put baby food in container of choice. Ziplocks work great (we had Chinese take out containers laying around) Mark the container with the date and the kind of baby food.

Simple huh!! The ice cube trays make 1 ounce servings and a typical container from the store is right around 2 ounces. Homemade baby food is especially nice when infants first start eating because they typically don't start eating a whole jar or later when you want to provide more than one option at each meal.

The cost savings...so this post is long overdue so I don't remember exactly how much it cost to make homemade but I will try to give you an estimate. Each fruit or vegetable would vary but I am sure in the end homemade wins. I made peas with a frozen bag which cost I think $3 or around that. It made 2 full ice trays which equals to 16 2-oz servings. A container of baby food at the store which I have found the cheapest to be around $.50. Purchasing 16 containers of baby food would cost $8.00. Homemade peas baby food easily wins out versus store bought. We all know time is money and I took that into consideration as well. Although I do not leave to work outside the home any longer I do know that this is easily something I would have been able to do when working outside the home. The apples I made took a little longer than some might because you had to peel them but even with that it took at most 30 minutes (a high estimate) to peel all the apples, slice them, steam them, and process them and put into the ice trays. Once they are frozen you just pop into a container which takes no time. But for instance take peas or green beans, they can go straight to steaming and would take 5 minutes to steam and then 5 minutes to process and put into the ice cube tray. I find that amount of time easy to fit in.. Especially if you took a little time on the weekend or even while you are cooking dinner. I decided to make more at one time which also saves time.

I think store bought baby food is perfectly fine, especially since the 1st stage is just veggie/fruit and water for ingredients, but if you are thinking about homemade give it a shot. Easier than you can imagine. I just googled homemade baby food and what kind I was making and got great results. Some items they recommend to peel for certain ages and some not. The sites were great about telling you what helps a baby with constipation or what foods to stay away from. Great advice on how to make it simple and easy. So give it a shot!

Local girls...Kee and Carissa....we can have a baby food making party at my house. By the time those kiddos eat baby food we could all use a reason to have a little wine and girl talk :)