Make Your Own Baby Food

I'm sure this idea is pretty self-explanatory and I bet you guys did this anyway, but I figured I'd post it anyway just because it's something I was getting pretty good at by the time Luke was eating table foods. We didn't buy any baby food jars with Luke, which ended up saving us somewhere between $150 and $250, based on what I can estimate. Well, actually, I did buy like 6 jars of it in Texas and like 4 in Utah when we were traveling to visit family...the one downside to making your own baby food is that it's not shelf-stable (you have to keep it in the fridge or freezer). You technically could make your own shelf-stable batches, but you'd need to use researched recipes and a pressure canner. Obviously not worth the work...

Anyway, making your own purees ("baby food") is so easy: You decide some food that would be good for a baby to eat, cook it until it's mushy, blend it until it's smooth, and store it. I swear that it takes even less time and brainpower than shopping for jars of baby food. (A few more dishes to wash, though.)

Let's see, how can I make this helpful...Here's a list of foods we made & how we made them:

• Peaches: I just used canned peaches because peaches are pretty expensive to buy fresh and the quality of the kind you get at the grocery store is just crummy anyway (picked way too green so they don't bruise in shipping). The upside to using canned food to make baby food is that it's already soft; there's no other cooking necessary. The downside is that you can't control as well how much salt, sugar, & preservatives are going in to the food. The peaches I bought were packed in heavy syrup, and I figured the last thing a 6-month-old needs is extra sugar. I got around this by draining the peaches, rinsing them in a colander, and then letting them soak in a bowl of fresh water for an hour or so--this leaches out the syrup that the peaches have soaked up. It leaves them tasting a little tart (processed fruits & vegetables are picked before they're fully ripe because it helps them not bruise or turn to mush when they're packed; food companies get around this by adding extra sugar or salt when they pack them to hide the unripe flavor), but Luke likes sour things anyway so he didn't even notice. If you want to keep them a little sweeter, just don't soak them or don't soak them for as long.
• Pears: The batches I made came from canned pears, just like the peaches, but fresh would work too. Note that with soft, ripe fruits (as compared to vegetables or hard fruits like apples), you don't have to cook the food before blending it, which retains even more of the natural vitamins.
• Plums: I made a batch of plums puree from a can of plums I randomly saw at the store in the hopes that plums would have the same magic effect on backed-up bellies as prunes, but no such luck. Prunes are strange and wonderful things. Luke didn't like the plums puree anyway; I wouldn't recommend it. When he got a little backed up and pears & peaches weren't helping enough (or we had run out), I'd just mix a little prune juice in with his oatmeal or the water in his sippy and it would do the trick.
• Green beans: I made these from canned (just rinsed & soaked to get some of the salt out), but I really should have used fresh--would have been just about as easy and not much more expensive.
• Butternut squash: I took a whole butternut squash, cut it in half, scooped out the seeds, stuck it on a baking sheet, cooked it in the oven for like an hour at 350, scooped out the gunk, and threw it in the blender. Super easy, made a TON, and was probably Luke's favorite vegetable.
• Carrots: I tried cooking these a bunch of different ways (in the microwave, boiling on the stove, whole, chopped, etc.), and I can tell you now that the absolute easiest way to cook these is in a rice cooker. Seriously. Just splash in enough water to cover the bottom, throw in the carrots (chop 'em down a little if they're much bigger than baby carrots), set it to cook (however you would for white rice), and when it dings they're ready. If they're still too firm, set it to cook one more time. If you don't have a rice cooker, I think boiling them on the stove would be second easiest. Just don't throw out the cooking water--use that water as you're blending them down if you need the puree a little thinner (the cooking water has a lot of the vitamins from the carrots in it). Luke loved carrots.
• Zucchini & summer squash: Same story as the carrots, but they cook a lot faster--easiest to cook in a rice cooker or steamer (chop into thumb-sized pieces), but boiled on the stove is easy too. Don't even bother to peel them. You can even just slice them thin & saute them with a little oil...yum. These may actually have been Luke's favorite, even more than the butternut squash.
• Sweet potatoes: Poke with a fork, microwave for about 10 minutes, slice in half, scoop out the gunk, & throw it in the blender. Another big hit.
• Spinach: Yes, I actually did make spinach baby food. There's a reason they don't sell it in the store. Luke would only eat it when we tricked him into it, and I never could get it to puree down very smoothly. Next go-round I think I'll just throw a little cooked spinach in with another batch (like green beans or something).
• Peas: Just used frozen peas cooked in the microwave. Luke never really liked the peas, although I know a lot of babies do.
• Pinto beans: Soaked in water, cooked in the crockpot on low overnight (something like 12 hours), drained (save the water for blending!) & threw in the blender. Basically refried beans without the fried part. Luke actually really liked them, & it's a super healthy (& cheap) source of protein that's pretty easy on tummies. Lots of fiber so it helps when they're a little constipated, too.
• Anyway, you get the idea, right? I had plans to make a bunch more kinds (broccoli, black beans, lentils, tofu, asparagus, tomatoes, bell peppers, cantaloupe, etc. etc.), but Luke was suddenly too old for baby food. It really took me by surprise--I still had like 6 ziploc bags full or nearly full of purees when he decided he was only going to eat grownup food.

A note on blending foods down: I keep saying "throw it in the blender," but holy cow, if you have a food processor, use that instead! Blenders have a hard time getting rid of all the chunks without you having to make it too watery. With most veggies you'll have to add a little bit water to get it to blend smooth (sweet potatoes, incidentally, need a LOT of water), but most of the purees I made ended up being thinner than I would have liked just because my stupid old blender needed a lot of encouragement to actually blend instead of just spinning the blades in an air pocket at the bottom. The thing that worked best for me was putting in about half the food, blending it as smooth as I could, adding enough water to get it tornado-ing around the jar, and then adding the rest of the food to thicken it up again. 

A note on storage: I tried a couple of different ways of storing the purees (plastic pitchers in the fridge, individual containers, etc.), but the best way to do it really is what everyone tells you: Pour the puree into ice cube trays, freeze, & then keep the cubes in ziploc bags in the freezer. Don't forget to label the bags (peas look a lot like zucchini!). And don't be surprised by how much it makes--a batch of green beans, for example, was I think 3 or 4 cans that blended down to fill 3 ice cube trays, which in turn filled two quart-sized bags. A good rule of thumb to remember is that each cube is about an ounce. Oh, and we have 5 ice cube trays for some reason, which makes the whole process SO much easier than if you're just using the two that come with the freezer. Do yourself a favor and grab a few extra trays at the dollar store before you start. 

In addition to the purees, by about 6 1/2 months Luke was also eating things like applesauce*, bananas (mushed up with a fork), yogurt, hummus, spaghetti sauce, cottage cheese, oatmeal, cream of wheat, etc. etc. etc.--basically anything the consistency of baby food. I know that it probably makes me a bad mom to give him such "grown-up" food so soon, but we introduced them slowly and he never seemed to have any trouble. We also don't have a family history of any allergies on either side. 

* You can totally make your own applesauce really easily, but I decided buying it was worth the work saved of not peeling the apples myself! Just look for "no sugar added" on the label--the ingredients list should say just apples, water, and maybe some ascorbic acid (vitamin C) to protect the color. There's absolutely no reason to add sugar to applesauce, unless the company is picking the apples so green that the apples don't have enough of their own natural sugars & vitamins developed yet. That's a clue that it's poor-quality food anyway, besides all the added sugar. No-sugar-added applesauce is never more than 10 or 20 cents more a jar than the regular kind, in my experience. Tastes exactly the same (better--more like apples!).

A note on rice cereal, etc.: Our pediatrician (and basically everywhere I've read anymore) recommended that we wait until 6 months to introduce solids; we made it to a little after 5. (Luke had started screaming any time we ate in front of him, grabbing food off our plates, and he kept acting hungry after I'd nursed him 8 or 9 times a day; he had really good fine motor skills to boot, so I just decided he was ready even though we jumped the gun by about 3 weeks.) His first foods were yogurt, bananas, smashed peaches, green bean puree, and hummus. However, I know that some pediatricians recommend introducing solids by 4 months or so, and when that's the case you traditionally start with rice cereal (watered down with formula or breast milk). I just thought I'd throw it out there that you really don't have to do that: If you're going to introduce solids early, you can use any cereal you want. White rice cereal is actually really unhealthy; it's nothing but pure refined sugars and starches. If you look at the history of feeding babies, it's actually the cereal companies that introduced the idea of starting with rice cereal. It's not something that other countries do, either (almost every culture starts infants eating solids around 6 months and they just start by feeding them mushy versions of traditional grown-up food). If you're going to do the cereal thing, it's just as easy to start with something whole grain (barley cereal, cracked wheat cereal, finely-ground oatmeal, etc.)--it's infinitely healthier for baby and it starts a habit of them preferring whole grains right from the start. The exception, of course, is if you have reasons to go gluten-free...in that case, brown rice cereal is still a better bet than regular rice cereal. It's more expensive, but since baby's only eating a tablespoon or so at a time, it's pretty unlikely you'll need to buy more than one box. Anyway, sorry! Just some interesting info (at least, I find it interesting). End soapbox. :-)

A note on baby-led weaning: Allie, you'll obviously have to pitch in more on this one, but I know the opposite idea of the rice cereal thing is baby-led weaning, where you don't even bother with purees at all and you just give kids grownup foods and let them figure things out when they're ready. The mantra there is "food is just for fun until age 1," which is a truism that's been really helpful to me this year with Luke. I really wanted to do baby-led weaning with Luke for lots of reasons: It seemed more natural, it's much less work for moms, etc. We gave it a shot, but it wasn't what Luke wanted or what I think he needed. Here's what I mean: The first solid food he ever got was a banana. He was excited and curious, but it kind of ended up a fiasco because he got really frustrated that he couldn't feed himself fast enough (those chubby little fingers just weren't coordinated enough!). Same story every time I tried to let him self-feed for the first little while. The kid was chomping at the bit to eat "real" food (anything but breastmilk), but he just wasn't old enough to have the fine motor skills to be really successful at it yet. He was feeding himself table foods by around 9 months (just like average babies), but between about 6 and 9 months we had to feed him. Fans of baby-led weaning will tell you that it's ok the kids are bad at feeding themselves at first, that they get better with practice, that there's no need to do purees because they can figure out how to feed themselves if you let them. All true--for a lot of babies. It just didn't work with Luke because he was too impatient, and I got the sense that to some extent he really did need some good, solid calories from "real" food to supplement his nursing by the time he was about 6 months old (if for no other reason than he was so big for his age and growing so fast). It also helped that Luke LOVED purees. He never spit them back out or anything**, unless he was full and trying to be funny (or unless we fed him peas, which took him months to come around to for some reason). What I plan to do with future babies & what I'd recommend to new moms is to start with baby-led weaning if that's something you want to try and to keep offering age-appropriate finger foods all along the way, but to supplement with purees until baby really has the fine motor skills (about 9 months) to be successful completely self-feeding.

** For what it's worth, I have a theory that babies who give their parents grief about spitting all of their baby food back out all the time just aren't old enough for solids yet. They haven't outgrown the tongue-thrust reflex that makes them good nursers when they're born. I bet if mom & dad waited a month or two, baby would be a much better swallower. End second soapbox.

Okay. So maybe this make-your-own-baby-food business seems like a lot of work, but can I explain how much food this makes? I'll try to give you a sense: Luke ate purees from 5 months until about 9 months. I had about 10 or 12 different kinds of purees in rotation (which is about the same variety you'd find at the grocery store, actually), and I only made purees for him 3 times. Seriously, 3 batches of cooking, about an hour and a half of work each, was enough to feed the kid for 4 months straight. Saved us at least $150, but probably over $200. That's like making $40 an hour. And it's fun! And you can customize how thick you make them just by adding more or less water--so no standing there trying to decide between Stage 1 and Stage 2 carrots in the baby food aisle at the store. And it's healthy, because you get to decide exactly what your baby is eating--no extra salt or sugar that you didn't add, no crazy BHT or food coloring, no wondering about cross-contamination (as long as you keep your kitchen clean!) or product recalls. And it's so much less wasteful than throwing away dozens and dozens of glass jars (Did you know that there is no glass recycling plant anywhere in the state of Utah? Every piece of glass thrown away in Utah goes to a landfill and will never decompose.) or plastic bowls. And there's nothing quite like seeing the literal fruits of your labors lined up in a colorful rainbow in your freezer.

Note that this is NOT my picture, although it looks a lot like the
purees I made. (It's from a blog with another lady's story about
making her own food that you can see here.) I'm still kicking myself
 that I never took a picture of our freezer full of cubes of food!

What's your story? Did you guys ever make your own baby food? How long did your little ones take before they made the switch to table food?