I get a lot of questions about my homemade baby food, so I thought I would make a post and someday maybe I'll make a button or a link on my blog so you can actually find it! Regardless, I hope this helps.
My dad has 5 beehives in his backyard and as a result, the neighbor's fruit trees all have quite the yield of fruit on them. I went one day next door and picked to my heart's content. This is the perfect time for me to make baby food for Porter! So here's the process. Apricots are a breeze.
First, the harvest!
Next, the washing.
Don't forget the help!
My mother's Blendtec SPOILED me. Any ole blender will do really.
Depending on the fruit, you may need to add some water to get it a nice consistency and not burn out your blender. I add just enough to where the liquid turns in the blender. I don't add anything else. No citric acid, no salt, no sugar, nada. That's it. Just apricots and maybe a little water. Yumm! Now that is goodness right there!
For babies, I tend not to do a whole lot of fruits. Probably because I always have homemade, pure applesauce with no sugar on hand. And bananas pretty much grow on trees at our house. Mainly I like to do veggies. Green beans, beets, sweet potatoes, carrots, squashes, pie pumpkins, etc. The difference in the process from what I just did above is the steaming. I steam my veggies on the stovetop first, then when I put the veggies in the blender, I put the steamed water back into the blender. This keeps as much of the nutrients in the baby food as possible. Also, out of all the ways you can cook a veggie, steaming is the best way to retain the greatest amount of nutrients.
When it comes time to thaw, I pull out a bag and put it in a tupperware container in the fridge. I may chip away on day one, then day two on the puree is thawed and easy to scoop. I always mix with oat or rice cereal for babies. The quart bag easily lasts a week in the fridge, so I'll change things up with either an additional bag of another kind of veggie, or a fruit. So far, I haven't had a kid turn green or orange, so I'm guessing it is working alright!
The best time to find your produce is in August and September. That is when the veggie yields are the greatest. I try to hit up the Amish or Farmer's Markets to get larger quantities, but have even had luck at the grocery store when the price is right. Keep this in mind depending on when your baby will need to start solids. Which should be about 6 months of age. You may be making your baby food months before the baby is actually ready to take on solids. I can't imagine the money I have saved doing this! In the 7 years I've been a mom, I can count on one hand the number of Gerber bottles of food I have purchased. This has truly been a blessing!
Some tips for buying food from the store once your baby starts integrating into solids, or ideas for food on-the-go: If you go down the canned veggies isle at the grocery store, they have lots of little cans of diced carrots, peas, and grean beans. They come with pull off lids which makes things delightful for travel! Now, keep in mind, they've been canned, which means they are well processed (aka, more nutrients is lost), but so are Gerber's. The nice part is that the veggies are soft. This is great for baby as they gum the food down. The important part is to look for the cans that say: "no salt added". Also, I've discovered that the Libby cans of pumpkin (the stuff you buy to make pumpkin pie) is literally pumpkin. Check out the ingredients label yourself: pumpkin, water. That's it. Sometimes I cheat and just buy the can. And for all types of on-the-go scenarios, I always keep some sugar free individual servings of applesauce in the car with some plastic spoons.
I hope this helps! I hope you'll share a few of your own tricks of the trade too!
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