When Emry was around 6 months old, we began supplementing her diet of breast milk and cereal with homemade baby food. Being paranoid first time parents, we liked the idea of knowing exactly what went into her food. We also took pride in the fact that many of the vegetables we used came straight from our garden. We literally produced her food from the ground up!
On this page, I've shared the process we used to make her baby food. I've also added some of my tips or suggestions in red. Making your own baby food very simple, and anyone can do it! Why did we start making it anyway, and why put a random page on my blog about it? You can read about it here and here.
Directions:
First you pick whatever vegetable you want to make. Steam the vegetable until it is cooked completely. When your child is first starting to eat real food, you want it to be cooked through as much as possible to make it easier to blend in the food processor - which will make it easier for your child to swallow. We used fresh veggies most of the time, and to make things easy we just used a microwavable steaming pot. If you want to make it super easy, just buy the microwaveable veggie steamers in the frozen section at the grocery.
Once the veggie is steamed, put it in the food processor. Add in a little breast milk or water. Breast milk is the best option because of the health benefits it provides, but if you aren't nursing or have a short supply of milk, water is just fine. If there was any water left in the steamer pot, use it. It still contains some nutrients from the veggies.
At a minimum, blend it until there are no more large chunks of food. Continue blending until the mixture reaches the consistency you desire. You may also want to add more breast milk or water as you are blending. I was vague on the amount of breast milk/water to use because it depends on a few things: the vegetable you use, amount you are making, and your desired consistency. Some veggies naturally contain more water and require less milk/water to be added. Making squash, which contains a lot of water, will require less milk to be added than something like a potato. And obviously, the more you make, the more milk you'll need to use. When we started out, we made sure the consistency was really thin and smooth, so we added a lot more milk/water. This made it easier for Emry to swallow without having to chew. One advantage to making our own baby food was as Emry got older, we could ween her into more solid food. We eventually used less milk/water in the mixtures to make them thicker.
Once the mixture has blended to your desired consistency, put it into air tight containers and refrigerate. For longer storage, put in the freezer. We would put the blended mixture into ice cube trays and put it in the freezer overnight. The next day, we'd pop out the cubes and store them in ziploc freezer bags. This was a lot more convenient for several reasons...we could store a bunch of food for a long period of time, the bags took up a lot less room in the freezer than storage containers, and we didn't have to thaw a whole container of food at one time. Emry never got burnt out on eating the same thing day after day, because we could also mix 'n match veggies together this way. We'd just take out a couple of cubes in the morning to let them thaw for Emry's lunch or dinner.
When we begin making food for baby #2, I'll post some pictures of the process!
Here is a list of some homemade baby foods that we have made:
Acorn Squash
Broccoli
Broccoli/Cauliflower Combo
Butternut Squash
Carrots
Cauliflower
Green Beans
Peas
Potatoes
Spaghetti Squash
Sweet Potatoes
Turnips
Vegetable Medley - Carrots, Cauliflower, Peas
Yellow Squash
Zucchini
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