Making Homemad Baby Food

Yesterday my baby turned 6 months old (where has the time gone?!?!?) so we decided to start introducing foods.  Up until this point she has been exclusively breastfed, but she has been showing interest in us eating and trying to grab our food, so it seemed like good timing.  With my older daughter I made all of her baby food, so of course I will be making all of the baby food this time around as well.  I love being able to make baby food, its easy, cheap and you have more control over the foods you are putting in your baby's body. 
There is a farmers market one a month about a mile down the road from us, so today we ventured down to the market to pick up something for baby's first food. My older daughters first food was sweet potato, so that was what I wanted to make for my second daughter as well.  Sweet potato, in my opinion, is a great first food, its sweet, can be pureed to be very smooth and it has a lot of vitamins in it.  Thankfully I was able to find a vendor selling organic produce and picked up 2 nice sweet potatoes for $2.27.

Making Baby Food

Making baby food sounds like it should be difficult, but it is actually super easy.  For the most part you just want to steam or bake the selected food until soft and then puree it adding breast milk/formula or water to get it to the consistency you want it to be.  For the sweet potatoes I baked them whole in the oven at 400 degrees for an hour.  I let them cool for a bit and then scooped out the insides into my food processor (you do not need any special baby appliance to make baby food, a cheap food processor works just great).  I added about 6 ounces of breast milk to the two sweet potatoes to make it nice and smooth.  Some other good first foods are: apples, pears, peas, and squash.  Just bake or steam them until soft.  For younger babies you will want to remove the peel so that it is smoother but for older babies you can include the peel.  I like to add fresh breast milk to my purees to boost the nutritional value, but wholesome baby foods has a great resource on other ways to thin your puree (they also have a lot of great recipes).

Storing Baby food
Once I make my baby food I like to portion it out and store it that way.  Because we are only offering a puree once a day and I can keep it in the refrigerator for 3 days, I made 3 small portions (about a tablespoon is good to start with) to go in the refrigerator.  I then put any remaining amounts in my silicone baby food tray to be frozen.  Once these are frozen solid I pop them out and put them in a plastic freezer bag and label with the contents and date (can be frozen for 3 months).

 

I am excited to start introducing new foods to my little one and start combining flavors and textures later on.  I love being able to make her food, as you can see it is VERY easy and extremely cost effective (approximately 17.5 cents per serving).