Made for Baby with Love

When my first son was born, making my own baby food never even crossed my mind. Maybe it was because I was worried that I wouldn't make it correctly, along with everything else I worried about that first year, or maybe it was because I had no idea what babies even ate. So when E was born this past Fall, I was a little surprised when I found myself starting to pick up various baby food making tools at my local Buy Buy Baby. After stopping to read the backs of all of these various tools, I started to realize that most of these things...the food grinder, the steamer basket, the blender, the cute little storage containers....I already had in my kitchen. How hard could it be?

But then the doubt crept back in....maybe I needed all these fancy baby food making tools? So I did the only normal thing I could think....I posted about it on Facebook to get the opinions of all of my mommy friends. Did I need all of these fancy baby food making tools? Or could I just use what was in my kitchen? The response was unanimous....use what you've already got in the kitchen. So I did.

I will tell you though that one of my faults is that I am terrible at reading directions all the way through, so even though I read up on some basics about steaming times, etc, I really just winged it and it all turned out in the end.

On the menu: sweet potatoes, butternut squash, green beans, carrots, apples, pears, and peaches. I know I show bananas in the picture, but I wasn't sure if those would freeze or not, so I decided to just smash them as we pick them up in the grocery store. The same goes for avacados.

First, the peeling and chopping.

Followed by the steaming,

and the roasting.

I then tried grinding the food in the food processor,
but it didn't hold nearly enough
and didn't chop as finely as I would've liked.

So then I tried the blender, which worked
much better.

Each of my little storage containers served about 3 meals
when mixed with cereal.

All in all, I ended up making enough in one Sunday
afternoon for about 30 containers.

From a cost perspective, I estimate that the amount of fresh ingredients I purchased was roughly $20-$25 which resulted in approximately 90 meals (30 containers X 3 meals in each one) versus I estimate I would've gotten 2 servings from the pre-made containers at the store at roughly $1 a piece. So, in the end, a pretty good deal. Some may argue that the 2-3 hours of time it took in the kitchen evened out the cost in the end, but for me, I was able to spend time in the kitchen while my kiddos played and making healthy food for my baby was definitely worth it. And now that I know what I am doing, I will definitely be doing it again.