Monday, July 11, 2011

Making baby food

This is not revolutionary or very exciting... so many of you probably will want to skip this post! But I have a few friends who have asked me about making baby food lately, so here we go...

I decided to make my own baby food because I wanted to know exactly what was going into my kids' bodies. I was nervous that I was going to do something "wrong" when making the food but it turns out that it is VERY easy to do and I have fun making it now!

We started with bananas (success!) and avocado (failure) which do not require any cooking. The first cooked food I made was sweet potato. Since then I have made green beans, yams, acorn squash, butternut squash, carrots, lamb, peas, zucchini and broccoli.

The sweet potatoes, yams, carrots and green beans were all steamed first. The squash are best cooked in the oven in about an inch of water. I cook them at 400 degrees for about 35 minutes. This is acorn squash and butternut squash (get your mind out of the gutter).


This weekend I tried making peas for the first time. Since I have been buying only fresh ingredients, I hadn't gotten to peas yet (you can usually only find frozen in the store). I bought some at the farmer's market the other day so after a long time shucking them, I got this small amount of peas:
Not sure it was worth all that work for such a small return on the peas.

I break down the food using my trusty Cuisinart! In the beginning I added milk or formula to make it the right consistency. Now I reserve the water from cooking the vegetable and then add it until I get the consistency I want. Warning: when the food is defrosted they tend to be a little more watery than they are before you freeze the food!


And voila! I scoop them into ice trays. Two of these are the fancy baby ones that have a lid (which are fantastic! I love them!) but the other two are $.99 cube trays from Target. Whatever you have will work!

I just put these in the freezer and then take them out as necessary!

Trying meat really freaked me out. I boiled lamb and then pureed it in the food processor. But the consistency of that was just strange. So I ended up mixing the lamb with sweet potato. If anyone has better ideas on how to prepare the meat, let me know!

Happy cooking my friends!


2 comments:

  1. Neither one of my kids liked typical baby food. I got off the hook easy and would mash whatever we had for dinner with a fork.

    Thank you, children. You ruined my breasts, but I didn't have to prep you nourishment.

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  2. You're more granola than I thought. :)

    I also make my kids baby food,though it's more like whatever I'm eating, masticated. Ewwww.

    I'm grossing myself out. however, it's true.

    Brilliant way to cook squash. I'm doing it.

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