First Foods - Milwaukee,WI

I use www.wholesomebabyfood.com for homemade baby food. I make all my own & it is SO much cheaper & really easy. I highly recommend it!

I started both of my kids on vegetables first, that way they didn't develop a taste for the more sweet fruit. The orange vegetables are more sweet, so they liked it enough to try it. We gave them same food for a few days so if there were any allergies we would know what was causing it.

When my daughter began eating solids, I started with vegetables. The process I found worked best was to freeze the food in ice cube trays. This provided one ounce portions, which was perfect when she first started. Good luck!

Get "Super Baby Food" by Ruth Yaron. It was fabulous. It's a great step-by step guide on what to try when and how to do it. I used it for both my kids and saved a lot of money. It may seem overwhelming as an idea, to make your own baby food, but really it's very easy. It actually becomes a non-event since you either work regular foods into your babies diet or you have ready pureed stuff in the freezer.
You'll be great! Go for it!
T.

We try to start with veggies first, our children love their fruit and cereal. We found that when we started with the fruit first, that we had a harder time getting them to eat their veggies. (We also started with the green veggies first, the carrots are pretty high in sugar content, and even though they are very nutritious it is like starting with fruit.) Of course, my baby decided she wasn't going to eat baby food at all, so we went straight to cooked veggies and fresh fruit, and she gummed them. Good luck!

When I started my son on solids, I only did vegetables to begin with. The only fruit exception was bananas. I would cook up a batch of veggies and put them in the blender (with about a 1/3 cup of water to a full blender of veggies) and blend them down to baby consistancy. Then I grabbed a cookie sheet with foil wrapped on it shiny side DOWN. Dollop serving sizes of your baby food onto the sheet and pop in the freezer. Once they're frozen you can toss them into a gallon baggie and just grab one out when you're ready to use it! You can use bags of frozen veggies to cook up too. This method is SO MUCH cheaper and healthier than buying Gerber baby food.

You don't want to do fruit first because the little ones get so easily addicted to the sugar right off the bat. They need to get used to the more bland vegetable flavors first. My son will eat anything good for him to this day, and is not addicted to sugary sweets or juices.

I am momma to a 2 1/2 year old boy. I've been married 3 1/2 years.

J.,
I made my own baby food for our daughter and was greatly helped by the book, Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron. It has easy to read tables to help you when to start what when, great recipes and is laid out in a way that you can just go to the chapter that helps you. Check it out and best of luck to you.
C.

I would recommend veggies first- sometimes if you start fruits first, they won't take to the veggies. Do one new one every three days to check for allergies. I didn't make my own food, but have seen recipe books in the bookstore on how to do that if that is the way you want to go...

Hi J.,

Good for you; you won't mind being a role model and tasting this food! I made baby food for both my kids now 16 mos and 4 yrs. It was very easy and cheap!!! I started out with sweet potatoes and then bananas. I bought a kit by Fresh Baby with a cookbook, video, and covered trays for freezing (bought 2 additional ones). The kit is sold online, at Whole foods, Outpost and USA Baby. I cooked every Sat. morning for about 1 hour total and always had penty of food on hand. Have Fun!!!

I've been told my my midwife and babies doctor that you should start babies on veggies before fruit b/c if they get a taste for the sweet fruit first they might not go for the veggies after that. There are baby food grinders out there that make it easy to make your own. Good luck with those babies!

I started my 5.5 month old with the rice cereal first adn then introduced vegetables -so far Squash and peas. She doesn't like the cereal too much but the vegetables she's okay with - I haven't done my own food yet - Gerber makes good ones and is a long time reliable brand. If you have time - make your own - saves money but remember not to add any salt or sugar -preserving it might be a challenge. I heard to use ice cube trays for each serving. Ask your pediatrician though as each child is different to be sure what to do. Congratulations on twins - that's exciting!!

Start with single grain rice cereal for a week or two, about a Tbsp a day. If that goes well start veggies, a new one no faster than every 3 days in case of allergy. Then go to fruits, same schedule. Some say if you do fruits first they will prefer the sweet and not want to do veggies. If they don't like the rice cereal you could also try oatmeal down the road, my daughter seemed to like it better. After 6 months of age and going through all the fruits and veggies, you can start meats. Be sure to have a camera ready when trying new foods, the faces they make are priceless!! Good luck!

i made a bit of my own baby food, it was kinda fnu but time consuming. make a big batch and then freeze them in ice cube trays, and then you have an individual sized serving.

you can start with anything, but they are going to like the fruit way more than the veggies. we have 3,000 tastebuds, babies have 10,000!!! so anything strong is going to probably be hard to give them because of all those tastebuds!

there are lots of recipies for baby food, someone just recently posted a question about this too i think, so you can look back for the answers on that one too. i dont remember the name of the book i got (i didnt use it that much) BUT basically anything that you can get to mash is good. boil it, microwave it, steam it, whatever you have to do to get it to squish is great. foods that are already squishy, like squash, is fantastic!

you dont need to add butter and salt, i liked the idea of not adding any of that so they would get used to the taste without it, as we are so used to adding it that it doesnt taste good without it. (my husband and i are spoiled or something lol) however, we are trying to wean ourselves off too.

if you used canned fruits or veggies, you should always rinse them as they usually have some preservative and or salt and sugar in the juice or water.

good luck in your search for recipies, there are a lot out there!

Hi J.- I made my own in the beginning as well and it's very easy if you have a mini food processor. I just flew from the hip and found that if you use frozen veggies to boil them for 15-20 minutes and then process them. This way you control the salt and the texture (I'd use the water that I boiled them in to thin it out since I figure some nutrients were likely boiled out.) I'd start with veggies- when you run out of frozen, a sweet potato goes a long way. Good luck and have fun with your babe!

There is no need to make baby food J. or to spoon feed babies.

Bake until soft: potatoes and sweet potatoes, Steam: carrots, Cut up: pears, melon, watermelon, bananas, avocados..., Thaw and serve: frozen peas, blueberries (or buy fresh)... They will pick them up and eat any of these items if they are hungry.

Having twins must mean you could use a break now and then. Put the food on their trays and sit back and relax with a cup of tea as you watch them explore their food. The colorful nature and varied texture of whole food is stimulating for their developing brains as well.

You will find everything you need at wholesomebabyfood.com

I made baby food for my 2nd child and was kinda procrasinating it cuz I thought it was going to be so much work. To my surprise it was soooo easy and a ton cheaper too! I will definetely use this site to make my own for my 3rd. I've always started with vegies and then went to fruits. For making your own food bananas are an easy place to start since all you do is mash em up with a fork and freeze the extras in a ziplock in the freezer. An icecube is = to 1 oz. baby food. You can adjust texture with your own baby food according to the stage your baby is at by adding breast milk, formula, or water from steaming to the food to water it down to the correct consistensy. I found it easiest to freeze it as is and adjust the consistensy with breast milk after I thawed it. I hope this helps. good luck!! :)

We ordered a food mill from KidCo and LOVE it. When we were looking a few years ago, we could only find it online; now I've seen it in our natural foods store also. I've heard from some moms that the food is not ground finely enough for "stage 1" eaters, but both of my boys have been great eaters (our 7 month old is working on finger foods) and we've had no problems. One of the things I loved about the food mill is that I could just pull foods from our plates--simple ones at first, moving to more exotic and interesting--and our son would be exposed to the foods he was going to be eating on his plate in a few months. We did the rice cereal thing first, then some veggies--peas, beans, carrots, then oatmeal and pieces of fruit, applesauce, yogurt. We do buy baby food for travel and also to expose our son to things we don't regularly eat or that are difficult to grind in a food mill (spinach). We have two wonderful eaters (well, so far!) and for us, the food mill has actually been easier than buying baby food. For us, it makes us think of baby as part of our family, and he loves being part of meal time--we couldn't dream of NOT feeding him when we were eating our meals, which I think will help them both in the long run as far as trying new foods.

Oh yeah--and we never made food ahead or froze it; I just prepared what food I wanted him to eat at mealtime. It took about 30 seconds more than making supper for just us. It meant a slight adjustment in grocery shopping--more frozen fruits and veggies and making sure we had accessible fresh fruits and veggies--but not by much. Those were all things we ate pre-baby, too.

Hi J.,

I have a 10 and 1/2 month old baby girl and I have been making my own baby food since she was 6 months old. I must admit that I was confused about which food and how much of it, but I read a couple of books that helped me to gain confidence and knowledge.
The books I highly recommend are those written by Annabel Karmel. Go to her website http://www.annabelkarmel.com/
to find out about her list of books.
Another book I read and helped me with the time of the meals is titled "The New Contented Little Baby Book" by Gina Ford.

I forgot to mention that I couldn't have made my own food if it were not for the Magic Bullet Blender. Go to the web site http://www.buythebullet.com/ and check it out.

Good luck!
B.

Hi Jen!

I have a 2 1/2 yr old daughter and a 15 month old son, and I homemade all their baby food. I started with veggies. Sweet potatoes are easiest so I started with that for my daughter, but she later did not like green veggies, so for my son I started him with green beans. For those and any other veggies (I also did broccoli, cauliflower, butternut squash, and asparagus), steam them until soft, throw into a blender, and puree the heck out of them :-) until desired consistency. Add water as needed. When you first start for your new eater, you will use a lot of water.

About once a month I would spend a few hours at one time and make HUGE batches (we once bought and made baby food with a 25# case of green beans because they were on sale!), and freeze in ice cube trays. The book "Super Baby Food" by Ruth Yaron is very helpful.

It will seem like a lot of work at first, but to me it was totally worth it! You will save so much money and give your kids FRESH veggies that taste so much better than jarred food.

Good luck!

Hi J. -
I have twin girls as well - they'll be 5 years old soon. I never bought baby food except in special situations - like when we were traveling.
I steamed vegetables until soft and then pureed them with a little bit of water. I had one of the ice cube trays with a cover, but normally I just filled up regular ice cube trays and then put the cubes in a plastic bag or dish in the freezer until needed. I think I started with carrots and squash. My girls used to love butternut squash - of course, now they're a little more picky!
Definitely start with veggies - babies have a sweet tooth, so if you give them fruit first, they'll be less likely to eat veggies.
Really, I don't think you need recipes as such. After we got past the pureed stage, I gave them table food without any added spices or butter. I had a food mill that I used, which especially came in handy when we went out to eat.
Good luck with your twins! I kind of miss that little baby stage - my girls are so big now! (lots of fun, though)
J.

I make my own baby food after they are about 8 months. I could never seem to get it pureed enough. I started with cereal at about 5 months with my 2nd, not till 7 months with my 1st (formula totally satisfied her) and then to veggies. At about 6-7 months I started with fruit too. They say if you start with fruit that's all they are going to want. Good luck! It must be such a challenge to raise twins:-)

They say start with veggies then move onto fruit. Because they may like fruit and be real stinkers about ever trying the veggies.

If they don't like the veggies alot you can mix that or even the fruit in with their rice cereal.

Good luck!

Hi, Jen

I would see if your library has a copy of Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron. She goes into great detail about making your own baby food and what food to introduce when. The book also has a lot of recipes for when your children are older. I've used it a lot and my daughter is now 3.

H.

J. get the book "Super Baby Food" by Ruth Yaron - your local library should have a copy if you don't want to buy a copy. It is amazing and tells you everything you could possibly want to know about preparing and freezing your own baby food. I followed it step by step and never bought a bottle of baby food. Good Luck.

I really liked the book Babywise 2 by Gary Ezzo (it's only about $10). They talk mostly about introducing solids and what to feed when, snacks, highchair manners and more. It was so helpful! No one ever tells you about that kind of stuff. Without it I would have been completely lost!! They do make some referances to Babywise 1, but don't feel obligated to read that one first, you don't have to read it for the 2nd book to make sence. :)