First, I tried green beans.
I bought these fresh. I washed them, cut off the ends, and steamed them up in our trusty rice maker (we use our rice maker so much in our household). Then I pureed them in the food processor that Rory gave me for Christmas. I looked up everything online to make sure I was doing things correctly. I found out that you should add the water that you steamed them with to the puree since a lot of the nutrients is are the water. I thought that was interesting. It makes sense, but like I said, I'm no cook so I hadn't thought about that before.
Don't worry, she did end up liking them. She was just being a little dramatic.
After green beans, I tried carrots. I bought these frozen, making sure the ingredients only listed carrots and water (some vegetables are hard to find that way). Then I made peas, bananas (I just mashed those with a fork), and pears. They all turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. (I can be somewhat domestic. Don't I make you proud, Mom?)
A note on cost: I may be a tightwad, but again, this isn't the main reason I decided to make baby food. So, let's figure this out: A jar of baby food is roughly $0.50 and you can get one maybe two servings out of it. I spent $2 on frozen carrots and I was able to make 24 servings and I prepared it in less than a half hour (much of that time was spent waiting for them to finish steaming). If I had spent $2 on jars of food I would only get between 4 and 8 servings. That's not a big deal when you are buying a couple jars, but it can add up.
I really didn't mind doing the work, so I think I'll continue to make Miss Fifi's food.
Has anyone else tried making baby food? Any thoughts?
6 comments:
Yes, you make me proud! Have fun. Like Grandmother said, "Anyone can be a good cook if they can read . . . they just have to read the right recipes."
I think making your own baby food is great! (when you become pro, you might need to teach me!)
I made food for both of mine. And once they had been introduced to most foods, I just started grinding up what we were eating if it didn't mash well with a fork. Hand crank baby food grinders can be found at target/walmart for around $15. One of the best investments I've ever made! I also recommend using cream of wheat and quick oats for cereal once they are eating meats (I always used the grinder for meats, baby food meat is sick) and don't need the added iron in baby cereal.
I was just reading about how to make your own baby food. I'm definitely going to do it when Grace starts eating real food. What would really be nice is to have a garden and grow all the vegetables myself, but we'll see...
We would love to get together any time. Just let us know when you're free. Natasha and Chelsea were wanting to do something a little while ago too, so we should all get together.
So great! I haven't tried making my own baby food before (although now I'm tempted to give it a try), so I'm not much help. I will say that I had a friend of mine who made her own off-and-on and she said it was great, but you had to be careful w/the produce that's not in season, 'cause then it can get much pricier real quick.
Feel free to plan on Vera. I don't think it'll get used by us, unless for a possible middle name :) I will say that if Ezra had been a girl, he definitely would've been Vera, however.
I am a total fan of the make-your-own method :) You're amazing!
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