(No, this post is not a hint toward what our boys’ surprise was. Oh my. I simply get a lot of reader questions regarding what to feed baby. That’s it. Our surprise was much less exciting than a baby announcement – I’ll post about it tonight!) :)
Pureed Bananas: Ripe bananas run through my food processor until smooth – great for baby!
Ah, the memories. I used to always make food for my babies, back when my babies were babies. I still make food for my babies, but my oldest baby is 14 now. He prefers steak to pureed veggies. He’d also like to know when I’ll stop calling him my baby. (The answer is never, but I do try to avoid saying it in front of “the guys”. I’m not that uncool.)
Before I talk about making baby food, first I’ll quickly share what I don’t recommend feeding babies (but keep in mind I’m just a mom, not a doctor):
- Any kind of sugar before age one and really, do they need much after that?
- Salt, unless it’s a very pure form of sea salt and then, very little
- Grains, even the baby cereal that’s usually recommended. It fills ’em up, but their little tummies have a hard time digesting rice, oats and other grains, which can cause digestive issues now or later. I say wait on the grains if you can.
Making baby food is super simple, very inexpensive and takes very little time. One of the easiest foods to make for baby is Pureed Squash. You can read how to make pureed squash here. Making sweet potatoes is just as simple:
To Make Sweet Potatoes: Scrub them, stab them, bake them in a covered dish for about an hour, then peel them and puree them. So easy!
Pureeing green beans or peas are a little trickier as the “skin” kinda hangs around and keeps the food from being smooth. After failed attempts at making pureed green beans and peas, I found it easier to wait a little while before offering these to my babes. They made the perfect “finger food”. Frozen peas, by the way, are yummy and great if Baby is teething!
The one way I found to get green beans and peas into my little guys before they were old enough for “finger food” was to use a Kidco Baby Food Grinder. Man, I loved that thing. Whatever I had cooked or fixed for the rest of us to eat – green beans, peas, potatoes, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, apples, pears, bananas, peaches, nectarines (do I need to keep listing them?) – I’d stick it in my Kidco Baby Food Grinder and have instant baby food that my boys would eat faster than I could make! The “skin” or any difficult to eat part of the food would be “ground out” and the soft baby food would rise to the top. If you have a baby and you don’t have a Kidco Baby Food Grinder, I really, really recommend getting one!
Also, one of my very smart cousins told me about the BabyCook, which appears to have been invented after my babies needed pureed food, hmph. I’ve seen the BabyCook in action and it’s about as cool as they come. With the BabyCook, you can very quickly steam veggies, reheat food – even defrost food to make a healthy, quick meal for baby. Once the food is steamed, you can use the BabyCook to puree it to any desired consistency. Babies nothin’. I’m thinking I need one of these for me!
I used to always freeze pre-made baby food in ice cube trays, pop them out and re-warm them for a quick meal. It worked pretty well, but I’d love to hear if anyone else has a more efficient method of making baby food ahead of time?!
And, while we’re on the subject of baby food, I wanted to mention what another smart cousin showed me last week. Homemade baby food is great, but sometimes a little convenience on the go is a good thing. Have you seen these cool little Baby Food Pouches from Ella’s Kitchen? (Or here are some other ones I found from HappyBaby). Really, where were these things when my babies were babies?
Share your favorite baby food making, freezing, storing and serving tricks!
Thank you Laura!!! A friend of mine is due in Aug, and I promised to make her homemade baby food! Now I will have a resource for when the baby Judah starts solids!
What worked for us was to offer finger foods when babe was between 6 & 12 months, depending on interest. I had grand plans of making my own baby food, but my first child would not tolerate purees. We offered her age-appropriate foods (green beans, asparagus, apple, etc) from our meals and she would gum/taste them. Having a whole green bean gave her something to grab onto while she ‘played’ with her food. With my children being breastfed, I knew complimentary foods were not nutritionally needed until much later, so letting her sample and taste a variety of foods with a focus on taste & texture variety suited their needs well. It is a really fun stage, seeing your little one become interested in food!
You are my kinda gal, Laura. :) Baby led solid feeding is fun. My son was fine with purees. My 10 m/o daughter, not so much.
Thank you for posting this! I am just beginning to feed my 4th child baby food and I’m making it for the fist time and I’m loving it. And I’m thinking why didn’t I make baby food with my other 3? It’s soo easy. I haven’t heard of some of the fun gadgets you mentioned. So thanks!
So Laura, I have been following you for a little while now, and I’m pretty sure you haven’t posted any random baby posts like this. Could this be part of the “surprise” that you are torturing us with that you gave your boys? ;)
Ditto here on the baby post, Laura.
If I remember correctly, Laura had some complications w/her babies, so they decided for her health sake to not have anymore. well she could be adopting a baby! lol
Ha! No…no more babies, unless God has a completely different plan than we think He has. :0
No, the true, boring reason I posted this is because I’ve had several readers email and ask what I fed my babies so that they would know what I recommened as good for feeding theirs. That really is all. Maybe I should have said that at the beginning of this post!? :)
I don’t have kids yet, but I want me one of those baby food makers for when I have them! I’ll have to register for them or something ;)
Just a tip for anyone making their own baby food…the book Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron has an awesome chart in it that shows appropriate foods for each stage, how to cook, store, etc. Highly recommend! Did it for my first child, great eater, now 7 and doing it for my 2nd now.
And agree, do batches in the food processor to freeze and individual servings on the fly in the KidCo grinder.
I made my daughter’s food a couple of years ago when she started solids. I also froze it in ice cube trays, then transferred them to Ziploc bags until I was ready to use them. I’ve got my 2nd on the way and was also wondering if there was a fancier/ better way to store the food. I loved cooking in bulk once every month or two. It was so easy and much cheaper than the jars!
YOU. ARE. AWESOME!!! My son hates flavorless foods so I mix a little garlic or ginger in with his veggies.
( JUST before I serve it otherwise it gets too strong…oops. )
I did the ice cube thing as well. It worked well, though, because when my boys were little I just took out one. When they got bigger, two or three… A lot of the basics are super easy to prepare. Apples, pears, carrots – just steam (boil apples) and blend or puree. And they are WAYYYY cheaper than buying the little jars.
Here are a few methods I used:
First of all, I have an immersion hand blender, so I’d take one day and cook up a bunch of veggies/fruits, puree them with my blender, and then either store them alone or do a mix of veggies and fruits and store them in some Avent storage containers I found (perfect meal sizes) or do the ice cube thing. I would add spices to them to make them more tasty (like adding pumpkin spices to the sweet potatoes…) but just enough that it wouldn’t bother his wee little tummy.
Now that my baby is 16 months old, I use those storage containers for leftovers – they make perfect babyfood containers still, on those days when we eat things that are too spicy for him to eat.
We have bought very few jars of babyfood until now – and now that baby #2 is on the way I know that I already have a great system down pat…and I’m rarin’ to go again making my own babyfood!!
So no grains for awhile? Do you just start with veggies first? DS #3 is 6 months, and is being breastfed, but still eats every 3 hours, day and night, so I’d love a little bit of a break. I’ve been grinding oatmeal in our grain mill, but it hasn’t been going well so far…
Yes, I’d start with veggies, whenever they’re ready.
I am lazy so skipped making baby food all together. My son was about 6 months old when we had lots of fruits and vegetables ready from the garden last summer. We just started him on those- strawberries, blueberries and tomatoes and he loved them. I never bought or made baby food though I admire mamas who do but any already mushy fruit or veg will do. We too didn’t introduce grains for quite a while.
I didn’t do baby food at all after #1. The rest of our five Hubby and I just held on our laps during mealtime and let them eat from our plates. I know you all are horrified but this was recommended by our pediatrician and they really don’t get much of anything down until they are nearly a year. When they were ready to eat and could manage it then they did eat and other than that was breastmilk. Most people think this would be horribly inconvenient but it was so easy and relaxed because we didn’t have to spoon their food while trying to eat ourselves. I have yet to convince our DIL to try this :)
For those looking for another resource for homemade baby food, I used http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com. I made it for my first child using this website and will be making it for my second in a few months. This website was the only resource I needed. It was great.
Those HappyBaby food pouches are the best! They fall under my favorite thing category. Because they are fun my daughter eats veggies she wouldn’t otherwise eat. She’s nearly two and she can’t get enough of them. And they reseal and can be eaten all day long. I LOVE them. We just got a bunch on Amazon using subscribe and save and a coupon which made them way cheaper then anywhere else. Otherwise they are about $1 at Target. Not bad if your kids won’t eat many veggies otherwise.
We loved making baby food! I had a little hand mill, and we’d just make our own baby stews, and baby fruits, and everything. The blender worked great for fruits, and the hand mill for other stuff.
One of my favourite recipes was just boiling a chicken leg and thigh along with some rice and carrots and peas. Then you take the chicken off the bone and throw everything in the food mill and grind it all together. It’s actually pretty good. And the babies always loved it! And you could make the carrots and peas in the same water as the chicken, and just make the rice separately, and it works fine.
I always found that was so much cheaper, too, then the store bought stuff, and then when they were ready to transition to real food, they were already used to the taste and texture a little more.
Sheila from To Love, Honor and Vacuum.
That looks like too much work! ;) I am another lazy mom that started with finger foods. It’s called “Baby Led Weaning” and originated in England. It’s awesome. My husband raves. If you read up on the science of it, I actually think it’s SAFER than purees. ;) Just food for thought if anyone is reading.
Ahh! I posted about this method above but I didn’t know it had an actual name! I wouldn’t have done it any other way! So easy!
LOL, it’s awesome, huh? There’s a book about it on Amazon (called “Baby Led Weaning”). ;)
Yep, that’s basically what we did. Obviously we didn’t jump right to “table” foods, we introduced age-appropriate foods one at a time. We did use some jars of WIC baby food because it was free, but other than that it was happier and easier and sometimes less messy just to do finger foods such as chunks of soft fruit, slices of avacado, etc.. Besides, if the baby is feeding himself or herself and deciding when they are full, I think it guards against future obesity. That said, some babies do have a preference for some foods to be mashed or blended so I don’t think there’s anything wrong with an occasional puree. After all, I eat some of my foods as “sauces” (applesauce, yogurt, pudding).
I think ths method is great and also introduces them to untold numers of flavors, textures and spice:)! I still make baby food but purely for my own defense..my seven month old has the appetite of a teenager !
Thanks for writing about this. I am due in five weeks with baby number 4 and want to make my own baby food. This is exactly what I needed to hear to get me started.
Like someone already said, I wanted to recommend wholesomebabyfood.com . It offers schedules, how-to’s, timelines, etc – everything you need to know to make babyfood. I also love that it gives you some unconventional, but healthy ideas for what to feed babies first such as vegetables and meats instead of what many docs recommend (grains and fruit).
And Laura, good job building suspense– I am dying to know what the surprise is!
I may be alone on this (I didn’t read any of the comments, sorry) – but I think that if you have to puree the food, the baby isn’t really ready for it. You can wait until they are 8-10 months and just feed them little pieces of table food that they can pick up themselves. I did this with my son and I know many others who have done this also. This is actually recommended on the Kellymom.com website (a site related to breastfeeding).
Love love love Kellymom.com. Great info on navigating the first few weeks of breastfeeding, common problems, and introducing solids. Since I learned from that site that solids should be a small portion of baby’s diet in the first year (they recommend 75% breastmilk, 25% solids…approximately…at 1 year of age) we never worried about “finishing the jar” and playing airplane games. I think not doing too many solids too early (not that Laura’s article is necessarily promoting that, it’s a good article if you or your baby prefer purees) helped us reach 2 years of breastfeeding, because the solids very slowly and naturally replaced breastmilk in my son’s diet by his own preference.
I made my own baby food with baby #1 and now baby #2 will be ready for purees soon! I have a question… did you find the MedCo grinder superior to the munchkin brand… just what they had on the shelf at Target. I didn’t have much success using it the first time around and am considering purchasing the MedCo one… just wondering if it was superior quality than the ones in the store?!
Thanks for this post… it makes me want to go puree some food for my sweet little man!
My little guy is 10 months old…just starting to get finger foods into his mouth about 50% of the time. He still breastfeeds often so I’m no too worried about nutrition. He was really interested in what we were eating for meals, so started him on solids at 6 months — he still has such a tough time with finger foods and has such an issue with textures that we have needed soft stuff. But I’m lazy so I’ve skipped all the puree-ing and just spoon fed him soft stuff: ripe banana, avocado, sweet potato. I used the kidco food grinder for things like peas, beans, carrots…now he can pick those up and eat them himself…just starting to introduce a few grains — quinoa, oatmeal, rice…but he still is having a texture problem with them! One other great thing is yogurt — I ordered the plain goat milk yogurt from Azure standard.
I just got done making sweet potatoes! I really like my immersion blender for the job. Light on clean up :)
Oh this was the perfect post for me!!! I enjoyed and appreciate all the advice given in the comments too! I am about 5 months pregnant with my second baby…and doing everything different for this little guy! Cloth diapers, total breastfeeding (if the Good Lord allows) and homemade baby foods! My hubby recently bought me a Super cool Stand Mixer with several of the attachments…and one of those is the food strainer/puree thing! That is what I had planned on using for my garden fresh veggies. Has anyone had any experience with using one of those???
If you’re really serious about the breastfeeding, you should read the newest edition (2010) of The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding. It’s a great resource! It helped me a lot.
Thank you Laura I will check that out!!! I had gastric bypass about 2 1/2 years ago and this pregnancy is so different from my first….I just don’t know what my body will handle??? I have to take protien and vitamin supplements to make it through each day…just haven’t figured out what breastfeeding is gonna do to my body…and there is not a whole lot of information out there about pregnancy after gastric bypass! Thanks for the information!
Thanks for the tips!
I am expecting my 5th baby, however this is the first one I will be a stay at home mom with. All the others had jar food, this one, however will get the royal savings treatment, 100% nursed, Cloth-diapered and home-made baby food.
At a garage sale recently I picked up this contraption and asked an elderly lady what it was. It has a small hand crank grinder on top of a little jar. I thought it would be perfect for table side babyfood grinding. She explained it was a nut grinder…. I’m going to give it the baby food trial too!
I love the idea of freezig in ice cubes. Soooo smart!
We also used the Super Baby Food book by Ruth Yaron. She included a chart of which food to introduce in what month. You could always back up a bit if you wanted to start later. The vegetables my child loved most were avacodos and sweet potatoes. The avacodoes were great since there really isn’t preparation other than slicing it open and removing the pit! She gave instructions for freezing in doubled ziplock bags and how long the foods would last in the freezer. I was able to start freezing food about a month before I knew I would starting feeding it to my child. Then I didn’t find it so overwhelming to have variety. I used my food processor and blender along with regular ice cube trays purchased for food use. She also gave instructions for preparing grains, for those who are able to eat grains. Read a couple of stages ahead of where you will be and it’s easier to ‘digest’. There is a lot of information in the book, use what is best for your family.
and don’t forget about good, organic whole milk yogurt. A great first-ish food – especially for those of us for one reason or other have been unable to breastfeed our babies as long or as much as we would have liked. And if you are someone who needs to supplement or exclusively feed formula, I can whole-heartedly recommend the raw milk recipe from the Weston Price Foundation. http://www.westonaprice.org/childrens-health/319-recipes-for-homemade-baby-formula#rmbf
It has been such a blessing for our sweet Elijah.
As to the issue of timing of introducing food….we have started feeding our monkeys when they can’t keep their hands out of our food!
Thanks, Laura for yet another practical, common-sense, post – I love getting your emails every day!
I hated the baby food stage with my younger brothers–so messy and the baby constantly spitting it back out. :) But I was determined to do what I needed to, so I wanted to make my own baby food. Interestingly, though, Clara wasn’t any more crazy about pureed food than I was. She much preferred soft chunks of the foods *I* was eating. We fell naturally into the “baby led weaning” thing feeding her from the table. One of the benefits of this (besides time–no making baby foods, no tedious spoon feeding) is that she learned early to “chew” and work things over in her mouth not just swallow. So choking was rarely an issue. Even foreign objects found around the house would get gummed (until I found and fished them out of her mouth). At 2.5, she has a wide variety of foods that she enjoys, even from different cultures. I hope this doesn’t change as she gets older, but I am definitely going to go this route with #2. I think if I had been formula feeding, had a hard time producing milk, or had a child who strongly preferred pureed foods, then it would have been another story.
I also made a lot of baby food, but didn’t freeze it in ice cube trays. I bought a number of baby food jars when they were on sale. When they were empty, I washed them in the dishwasher, and then put the pureed food in there. I liked doing it that way because I found the size to be good, and it was really convenient. I could take a couple of days worth of jars out of the freezer, and just stick them in the fridge to defrost. Then when it was meal time, they were ready. If it was a food they didn’t like when it was cold, I could put the whole jar in a bowl of hot water and it would warm up nicely. (We don’t have a microwave.) It worked great.