Baby Food!

It's trending right now - making your own baby food.  There are a lot of products out there to aid moms along in this.  Here was my experience:

While I was still pregnant, I read an article about baby's tastes.  It said that if you could get your child to consistently eat at least one (preferably more!) thing from each family group of fruits, veggies, grains, dairy and meat, that their diets would be set for life.  Sounds great, right??  That sounded like a good deal to me, and I set out to accomplish this goal.  I love to cook, and the prospect of making my own baby food was really exciting.  Also, I figured I could probably save money by buying fruits/veggies in bulk and freezing the food as needed.  Oh, my intentions were wonderful and my expectations were oh-so-high.

This website was my main resource for recipes, tips on freezing and age limits.  It was really helpful, and I highly recommend it!  I was armed with this website, my food processor (a regular Kitchen Aid, not the baby variety), and my steamer basket on my pasta pot.

I cooked, pureed and froze the following: apples, blueberries, cherries, mangoes, melons, pears, peaches, prunes, pumpkin, strawberries, asparagus, green beans, broccoli, butternut squash, carrots, cauliflower, parsnips, peas, sweet potatoes, spinach, zucchini and yellow summer squash.  (She was also given mashed bananas and mashed avocado, but those were not cooked or frozen.)

I was so excited to share these with my sweet baby!  On the whole - she loved it!  She ate almost everything I listed without much protest.  Peaches weren't her favorite, but I figured everyone's bound to have a couple things they don't like, right?

After the fact, here's what I would say about the cooking/prep:

- I don't see why a baby food processor is necessary.  They're probably nice, but I didn't need one.

- Next time, I would invest in a food mill.  They are helpful for meats and foods like green beans and peas that have thicker skins/stringy fibers.

- Peas were by far the hardest.  I gave up and bought peas in the jar.  Not only do you need to puree them, but they must also be strained by hand to keep the skins out, since they are a choking hazard.

- I really love that you can get a lot more variety with making your own food than what you can get from commercial baby food jars, although brands like Plum Organics, Ella's Kitchen and Happy Baby are fast closing that gap!

- It's really helpful to freeze the purees in ice cube trays, and then transfer the cubes to a freezer bag.  Then you can take out individual portions whenever you need them, and the rest stay preserved.

About the pureeing method - it's great for a lot of people, but next time I think I will be trying Baby-Led Solids.  If the next baby wants purees, that's fine too - but unfortunately for me, I have a little girl who is almost 2 who doesn't eat table food.  She'd much rather have purees (most of which I now buy from the companies listed above), and she doesn't like textures much at all.  I felt like doing a dance this week when she tried whole blueberries.  I don't completely blame the purees, but I think if I'd given her more exposure to food in its solid form, we'd have less of this problem.  

Baby Food/Solid Feeding products reviews:

- I've already mentioned the Plum Organics, Ella's Kitchen and Happy Baby food - they make these handy-dandy pouches that the babies can use to feed themselves.  They are great at home or on the go, they are wholesome varieties of organic foods, and my daughter loves them.  Gerber Organics has also just introduced a line of pouches, as has Babies R Us.

- The Munchkin Snack Catcher might be the smartest thing ever.  Okay, probably not - but it's still pretty nifty!  You can pour snacks into it - puffs, cereal, raisins, etc - the child can get a few at a time without spilling them out!  A word of warning: this works really well until said child grows up, gets smarter and more curious, and realizes that she can rake her hand in and out and spill them all over the place.

- These bowls are great - it's a really good idea to get bowls with lids.  Your child will most likely not eat all of their food every single time (ha!) and you'll want to be prepared for leftovers.

- If you're doing purees, the Gerber soft-tip spoons are the ones to get.  It will tell you if the food is too hot, and baby will be able to get all the food off of the spoon.  Some of the other spoons are too deep and they can't get all the food out of the middle.

- I'm intrigued by the Boon food dispensing spoons, but I haven't actually tried them. 

- I don't like the Nuby spoons.  They were too long, so there's less control for the feeder, the baby definitely can't use them to feed themselves because the spoon-to-mouth ratio is off, and they are too deep, so they baby can't actually get all the food that's in the spoon.  I use these to stir my own coffee in the morning.

- We tried these food teethers for my daughter when she was teething, but she never liked them.  In fact, she didn't like ANY teething device.