Homemade Baby Food - Hillsdale,IL

Super Baby Food is a great book by Yaren (forgot first name!?!?) I don't have time to write more now, but I fed both my girls homemade babyfood and would love to answer any specific questions you had. Feel free to e-mail me.

Hi- I read through and saw that you have received lots of info so I won't repeat any, but one tip I have is to make the baby food and then put into a gallon Zip Loc bag. Then snip one tip off (to make like a frosting bag) and then squirt onto wax/parchment paper. Then stick that into the freezer and when it is frozen you just pop them off and stick in freezer zip loc bags.

By doing it this way there is little clean up needed, and you can make as much as you want at a time (instead of only making the amount of ice cube trays that you have). They are easier to thaw out too because they look like a cookie and are spread out and an ice cube is more dense.

Good for you! As everyone else has mentioned, it's super easy and much cheaper! I loved www.wholesomebabyfood.com.

The next step is cloth diapers! :)

Good luck!

J., I have always made baby food. It's so easy.
Pick the vegetables you'd like to start with. Cook or
steam the vegetable. Put in blender with maybe a little
water or stock to blend easily. Put in individual ice cube trays,
cover and freeze. When you wish to feed the baby, take
a cube of veg. out ahead of time. Teething babies love
to suck on the veggie cube when you hold it for them.
Put a cube in a small container when you have to feed away
from home. And remember, babies don't need salted or
sugared food. DONT add it to the veggies and this is the
taste the baby expects.

Of course you can do this with pudding, jello, and anything else you can think of.
Have fun being creative and saving lots of money. More
importantly, your baby is getting off to a great start with
no additives in the food.
Enjoy this time with your baby.
S. T.

Hi J.,

I would buy frozen vegetables and steam them and then puree them (or whatever texture you are looking for) in the blender. I would then pour into ice cube trays and freeze, pop out and put into a freezer bag after frozen. I would also make apple/chicken which my daughter loved. Portion is one cooked apple (dice and boil) to one cooked chicken breast (dice and boil) - blend to desired consistency in the blender. Bananas, apple, pears, peaches, etc. are all super easy to blend up in the blender, too. Spaghetti - if you are making it for the rest of the family, blend some up in the blender - adding a little water if needed. You can feed him whatever you are eating if you blend it up.

Check with your pediatrician first - I know mine didn't recommend anything but breast milk until my DD was 6 months.

Good luck!

I use a handheld blender (also called immersion blender) to puree whatever we're having for dinner. That makes it easier to give my babies a variety (assuming, of course, that WE are eating a healthy variety -- I suppose I need to work on that more :) ).

Dear J.--

I fed my now 20 month old only baby food I made. Benefits were huge, and she now eats nearly everything we eat. Two books were super helpful, both by British author Annabel Karmel. She has several books for babies and toddlers, and the recipes are quick, easy, and taste good enough for moms to not mind tasting them too! Beware, however...once you start down this path, your baby will not eat Gerbers again!

Good luck!

I have made baby food with all 3 of my children. Cook the fruits and veggies on the stove or microwave. Then, put them in the blender with a little water. I usually make enough that I can freeze (in ice cube trays) for later. I still bought jarred foods so I would know the texture and thickness of the foods. As your little one grows and has a better ability of chewing, you do not have to blend the food all the way. Good luck and have fun.

I made baby food for both my kids. I boiled or steamed everything and used my food processor and it seemed to work fine. I didn't see the point in investing in a fancy machine to process baby food when I already had a nice food processor (I might be cheap, but the cost just didn't make sense to me). The only food that I couldn't seem to get to a nice smooth consistency was carrots, so I did buy jars of carrots at first and then once they were ready for a little coarser food, I served them my own version. Once they were ready for the casseroles and meat dishes, I didn't puree much. I just hand chopped the food to a size more manageable for the kids. I did try the jar versions at first with my son and got part of three jars of it spit back at me. So I just cooked as normal, but didn't add much seasoning until after I took out enough for the kids. It made my life easier because I didn't have to cook separate meals for kids and DH and I. Best of luck.

I see you have gotten several responses, I just wanted to add that I used ice cube trays to freeze the pureed food. When they are frozen I would pop them out and put them in a ziplock baggie. I would make a whole bunch at once so I wasn't doing it every day. (hint: sometimes I had to stick a table knife down the side of the ice cube tray to get them to pop out...depends on the food)

I used the book Super Baby Food. I loved it because it told you what foods were safe to feed for the age of your baby. It is easy to follow and has other great ideas as well.

You can look up information and sample recipes at superbabyfood.com

Good luck!

Yes, the Fresh Baby kit. You can get it online, Outpost, USA Baby, and I think at Whole Foods. It has a Cookbook, DVD, Freezer trays etc. I used it with both my children and it was so easy!

Hi J.,

First off, a great big THANKS to your husband for serving our country, and to your family for the sacrifices it makes!

My son is 9 months old and, and the only commercial "baby food" we buy is the Gerber Oatmeal. I buy organic canned fruits and vegetables, and simply puree them in the blender. He doesn't have teeth yet, so we haven't moved on to other foods.

Most fruits and vegetables need all the juice/water they are packed in, but you can do a little experimenting with that. Some types of pears and peaches get too water if you add all the juice.

Bananas can be mashed with a fork, and we keep different types of apple sauces on hand: plain apple, apple + apricot, apple + cherry.

As he gets older and gets teeth, I plan on using the "chop" function on the blender. We also have an old-fashioned potato masher that we plan to use on hot dishes and such.

Good luck!

Hi J.,

Make it simple on yourself. Just turn whatever you're cooking for everyone else into baby food. Carrots, potatoes, & sweet potatoes are easy to mash after they are cooked. You might want to get a hold of a small food processor to put things like green beans in. You really don't need to add anything to the food. Remember that babies have strong tastes buds so they don't need all the salt and spices like we do.

I have 4 children and I only bought baby food with the 1st child. All the others wanted what we were eating, so I just cooked for us and then turned it into babyfood. Also, you can prepare extra food and put it in ice cube trays to freeze. This way you can pull it out, heat it up and you have a perfect serving, for a young baby anyway.

I'm sure there are others who have great ideas. I hope this helps!

I did do some research online and found how you can make baby cereal and biter biscuit type things (made with store bought baby oatmeal and my husband even liked them!). But generally I just would boil some kind of vegetable or fruit so it was soft enough to blend or put though a food processor. Then I would either freeze little servings or put it in the fridge for a couple days. I didn't really follow any recipes for the veggies and fruit, just leave it plain until they start developing a taste for spices and stuff. Now my 10 month old (second child) has been eating what we eat for a couple moths already. Another handy thing to use is one of those hand food mills. So when our son started eating table food (pasta, soup etc) I would just put a portion through the food mill so he could eat it too (I know I was raised with one but you can still find them at Babies R Us or online).
Hope you have success, I know it saves us a LOT of money to make our own baby food!

I have the Super Baby Food book, and so far it's been very helpful (loved the safety chapter).

I just started my 6-month-old on solid foods (other than rice cereal) this week). I started with sweet potatoes. She seemed really surprised at the new taste, and not too thrilled. I think it was also too thick for her. Not that successful.

So the next time, I mixed in a little breastmilk to thin it out and add a familiar flavor, and she loved it. If your baby doesn't like it the first time, keep trying!

I also used the wholesome food website. It was great! Using ice cube trays to freeze what you make is really easy, I would make 2 different kinds a week and freeze 2 trays full, When frozen seperate into baggies and store in the freezer, I would usually have 5-6 diffferent foods frozen that way. Using a blender didn't work very well b/c I couldn't ever get all the food out and so I started using the magic bullet and it worked great, just the right size and it blended much better then our blender. Good luck!

Ruth Yaron's Super Baby Food (book). Takes you from homemade baby food to finger food and beyond. tons of great ideas- I just used the baby food recipes and the age-by-age food guidelines, but there is way more if you like.

Making baby food is amazingly easy. All you need is fresh (or frozen) fruits and vegetables and a blender or food processor. Be sure to cook fresh vegetables completely so that they are very soft. Put them in your blender with some of the cooking water and blend them till they are smooth. You adjust the consistency with the cooking water. That saves time and nutritional value. You can combine different fruits together to make them interesting and do the same with vegetables. I used old baby food jars and put them in the freezer after they had cooled. Some people use ice cube trays and pop them into zip lock bags after they are frozen. It's a great way to save money and know just what the kids are eating!
Have fun with it!

Hi J. - I made my own food too, I am not going to duplicate the advice others have given but there a couple of things I could add. One of my kids favorite foods was sweet potatoes - I put 5 or 6 in the crock pot on low (just wash them - no need to peel them) for 6 - 7 hours, they turn out beautifully - you just let them cool, mash or puree them in the blender and freeze them. Couldn't be easier. If foods are too thin and runny - I added some rice or oatmeal cereal to thicken them a bit before freezing. Have fun - it's easy, way better for your baby and the savings is amazing!!

It is so easy!!! Just cook up whatever veggies or fruit you want to use, and then throw them into the blender once they are cooked to tender. Add water to the consistency you like for baby, place in ice cube trays and freeze. Once they are frozen you can put them into a ziplock if you want, then you take out how ever many you need, heat and eat! We have done this for some of our children, and it is so easy! And I think more nutritious than the store bought, just for the fact that they are fresher and you can pick what you want to make!

I admit...I haven't read through the other responses. I started out making baby food with organic fruit/vegetables. It was very cost effective and quite easy I felt. However; my child would be immediately hungry all of the sudden at different times and what I found to be a pain was unfreezing the food in a timely and safe manner. I ended up just buying the organic baby food instead...not as cost effecient but it was much easier to pop open the lid! =) Good luck to you.

My dad, being a practical man and having been a depression era baby, made the single most logical contribution to our home made baby food efforts - "they can eat most of what you eat, they just don't need all the seasoningss and such" early on. He demonstrated by shaving a few bites of a fresh juicy apple with a large spoon and then feeding it to my son with a baby spoon.

Of course, my dad raised every vegetable that would grow in the south as well as a wide variety of fruits. Most of us don't have that abundance just outside our door, so we did the next best thing. Anything we couldn't find affordable in fresh form we bought frozen. Just zap a small portion of the frozen veggies or fruit and then blend. If it's too dry add a few drops of juice or a bit of broth.

Hi J.,
I made most of my daughters food when she was little and it worked out pretty good once I got the hang of it. I did a little buying of my own as well. There are so many ways to do it and if you buy fresh/frozen foods, they go a long way. For instance: If you buy some carrots - don't peel them - that's where all the nutrients are. Steam them with a little water under them on the stove until they are tender. You can cut them up if you want to speed up the process. Once they are tender, place them in a blender and use the steaming water as the liquid. That liquid is super good because some of the nutrients from the veggies drips down into the water so you're just using the good stuff. Keep adding water little by little until you get the consistency you want to feed your baby.
When you steam veggies, it's best to use a steaming basket so the veggies aren't in the water. That method is supposed to preserve the most nutrients within the veggies.
That method I explained with the carrots can be used with most veggies: broccoli, carrots, sweet potato, white potatoes, red potatoes, etc.....
As for fruits, you can mash them or put them in the blender until you get the consistency you want and if you need add a little formula/breast milk or water.
Since around here we don't have the luxury of fresh good veggies all the time, your next best if frozen since they are frozen at their ultimate peak. So if you get a bag of frozen peas, cook them like you would and put in the blender. You'll be surprised how easy and cheap it is.
The hardest part is getting started. Once you get started, just make sure you have a few different things on hand. A bag of peas will be a ton of meals for a baby. So what I did was buy little ( mini ) glass canning jars that are almost serving size ( or you can use empty baby food jars ) and put the food in their and leave maybe 2-3 different kids out and freeze the rest.
Sorry this is so long, but feel free to email me with any other questions ok? Good luck. My email address is ____@____.com.
C.

annabelkarmel.com

Annabel has wonderful books online. Don't be too hard on yourself if you find you don't have the time to invest in this, it is extremely time consuming. But if you can do this, it 's great for your baby. God bless!

Hi J.,
I made most of my son's baby food at first and later on did both homemade and some jar foods..but anyway...I used this website A LOT. www.wholesomebabyfood.com

I also bought the book "Super Baby Food" by Ruth Yaron. Between the book and the website..there was so much great info and tips on how to make your own and in what order to introduce foods. I took bits and pieces from each and didn't quite follow all the exact suggestions but I think that you need to do whatever works best for your family :)

Hope that helps!
G.

when you cook meals for your family-just put some aside-unsalted and unspiced-put in blender-if you have extra-you can always freeze it.

J.; i made all kinds of food for my kids using a blender and ice cube trays, this worked really well, i would put the food in the blender and get the consistancy i wanted, and then i would put the mixture into the ice cube tray and freeze it, once frozen, i would take them out of tray and put in freezer bags and mark what they are, then all i had to do is pull out one or two cubes and pop them in the microwave to soften, and stir , if they need it heated, just do a little more than thaw, this worked well, and was there when i needed it, of course it was trial and error as to how many cubes they would eat, but it worked and was easy , and when i needed to get food on the run, i would a couple cubes in a container andput it in the diaper bag, any way , thats whay i did, just have fun and enjoy life , D. s

The website that I have been using is wholesomebabyfood.com ... they have great recipes, nutrition facts, and ways to make/bake/steam foods for your baby. We have been making our own baby food for my little 8 1/2 month old since he was 6 months and have a lot of success. The website it great to answer questions too. Good luck!

J. -- Anything you eat that your baby is ready to eat is good. Example -- my daughter's first vegetable was sweet potatoes. I baked them and then blended in a small food processor. Green beans the same way. Whatever you would go to the store and buy, just think of your menu at home and be ready to blend away! Check for temperature before you give it to your baby so that it doesn't burn his/her mouth. (The freezer for 30 seconds works great for this.) When your baby is ready you can do the same with meats -- just add a bit of green bean juice or warm water when blending.

Your baby will LOVE it. My daughter loved it so much that when traveling, if I HAD to use jar food -- she would SPIT it out! And I don't know if it was the texture or the fact that the food wasn't warm.

My sister has been making baby food for her 10 month old daughter for a few weeks now. One way of freezing that has worked well is in breastmilk storage bags. When you want to thaw it, all you need to do is run it under hot water for a few minutes.

Hi J.

First of all, the idea of making your own food is really great.

My husband and I made both of our kids babyfood because I didn't like all the perservatives and salt that they put in it. Plus it was too expensive.

Anyway, we had bought a babyfood blender (got it at Babies R Us about 5 years ago).

We devoted a whole day on Saturday to make food for the coming weeks.

We would buy fresh fruits and vegatables (sometimes we would buy the frozen kind) and steam them until they were soft. (Canned fruit and vegatables is ok, but all of the sodium and preservatives, YIKES...)

Note: The softer fruit and vegatables like strawberries, blue berry, bananas, peas and green beans, you can just throw them into the blender. The more denser food (also fill the blender half way) like potatoes, carrots, etc.. you may need to add water, milk, breastmilk or formula to thin it out a little.

Once you blend the food, we filled up ice cube trays and let them freeze. Once they were frozen, we would place the frozen food in a gallon size ziplock bag and labled it.

Each cube was equivalent to a half jar of baby food (smaller jar). We put about 3 days worth of food in the refriderator (spell??) to let them thaw on their own. Sometimes we had to use the microwave.

Just a reminder is try out 1 food per week to rule out allergies.

Good luck, we had a lot of fun doing this. In the long run, the advantage of making your own food, is kids will more likely to love vegatables and fruit later on. I know mine do.

basically, as long as it is a simple food, or a combo of foods baby has already eaten, you can grind or mash anything that the family eats and give it to baby.

i would HIGHLY recommend however that you want until AFTER 4-6 months, signs of readiness all need to be present, and DO NOT RUSH INTO FEEDING SOLIDS. research is consistently showing that the earlier ANY solids are started, the more likely there is to be an allergy. even if you have done it with other children and had no issues, that doesnt mean that this baby will react the same way. the longer you can wait to start solids, the better.

www.askdrsears.com has awesome advice for any issue, but strongly supported advice for wating to start solids.

one big key, if food is getting spit back out at you baby is NOT ready for solids. my sons first solids were at 5 1/2 months, and i never had any spit back issues. he was fully ready. instead of the food coming out, food went in, stayed in, and went down. spitting is the most common and obvious sign of not being ready.

after all, as you know, they eat you out of house and home soon enough. why rush it?

Best website ever:

www.wholesomebabyfood.com

It will tell you when to introduce everything, as well as the best way to prepare it. This website is the one stop shop for all of your baby food needs. There's no need to buy any cookbooks - babies eat simple things anyway!!!

Hi J.,

I hope i'm not repeating too much, so i'll be short: i agree with the Super Babyfood book- it's awesome! One of the staples for my little one is canned pumpkin- the real stuff, not pie filling. You can feed it straight from the can just add a little breast milk or formula to thin until they are used to the thicker textures.

Good luck, looks like you've got some great advice to choose from!

Super baby food is a great book, I haven' made any of my own yet tho so we'll see...

I would buy cans of peas, sweet potatos, peaches, etc. and just mash them up in the food processor. I would fill ice cube trays and freeze them. Pop the cubes out and thaw as needed.

J.,
Good for you - its so easy, you'll wonder why anyone buys baby food. The basics you need are an immersion blender (easiest) or a magic bullet. I wouldn't recommend a regular food processor (unless it's mini) or regular blender. Too big to be practical. The little baby food grinders are good if you want to do food on the go, like at restaurants or other travel. Not really for everyday home use. You'll also want good ice cube trays. The book I used as my guideline that was tremendous was "Super Baby Food" by Ruth Yaron. There are a lot of good books out there. I liked this book because it told me what to try when, how to best prepare AND store the foods. Also lets you look up specific foods, dictionary style. So you could look up "cucumber" and she'll tell you what age to try it at, how to choose the perfect one at the store, how to cook it, freeze it and serve it. It also has lots of good recipes, snack ideas, etc. Have fun with it - it's surprisingly easy.

I second the notion for the Super Baby Food Book. It's great. It has all kinds of advice and recipes. I've seen them at thrift stores before ... Savers or Goodwill?