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Making Your Own Baby Food

So you’re considering making your own baby food?

It’s an awesome choice for you and your baby that will save you money without a lot of additional use of your time.


You’ll need 3 things to get started:

  1. Some kind of blender. I love my immersion blender because I could puree the food inside the container I already planned to store it in and only needed to clean one small piece – it made things really quick and easy. You can absolutely use any kind of existing blender in your kitchen though and you shouldn’t have any issues!

  2. A way to cook the food. The easiest way to cook most fruits and veggies is to steam them or bake them. The only thing to consider here is that you absolutely do NOT want to microwave the food – it kills the nutrients.

  3. A way to store the food. So you don’t need anything fancy and anyone who tries to sell you some kind of special baby food container is just wasting your money. All you need is a Tupperware container to store the food baby will eat within the first 3 days of making it and and ice tray to store the left-over food that you’ll want to freeze and use later. You can simply put the baby food in the ice cube tray, cover with plastic wrap, let it freeze and then pop the frozen cubes out into a Ziploc bag the following day for long-term storage.

Here’s an example of how easy this process is:

  1. Get water boiling in your double boiler (or preheat your oven if you don’t have a way to steam) (1 minute)

  2. Take a butternut squash and cut it into cubes (1 minute)

  3. Put unseasoned squash over heat and go back to loving on your baby (1 minute)

  4. Let the food cook/play with your baby (5-10 minutes, but I won’t count this since you can step away)

  5. Once food is tender dump it into a storage container (1 minute)

  6. Take your immersion blender and puree the food (or use a different form of blending) (1 minute)

  7. Put a lid on your container and store in the fridge (1 minute)

  8. Clean immersion blender (1 minute)

So that’s 7 minutes of attention away from your child every 3-4 days (since you need to wait that long in between new foods). I personally would consider that to be fairly minimal.

Let’s also remember that there is often a lot of food left over so you will have frozen to use later


1 butternut squash will make 32 meals worth of food in the early days of solids!!!


What’s the cost savings you ask?

1 butternut squash (4lbs/64oz) costs $4 at my local Walmart = $0.06 per oz

16 pack of Gerber butternut squash baby food (64 oz) costs $10.32 at my local Walmart= $0.16 per oz


OR

1 3lb/48 oz bag of sweet potatoes costs $1.77 at my local Walmart = $0.03 per oz

16 pack of Gerber sweet potato baby food (32 oz) costs $7.92 at my local Walmart = $0.24 per oz


Not only is it easy and cheaper than pre-packaged baby food – you also know exactly what you’re feeding your child.

It seems like there are ALWAYS articles coming out about the top baby food manufacturers being under investigation for allowing unhealthy amounts of toxic chemicals in their food. Just in the last couple of months the following article was released: https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/17/health/baby-foods-arsenic-lead-toxic-metals-wellness/index.html


The headline reads: “95% of tested baby foods in the US contain toxic metals, report says”.


Well that’s concerning…


Additionally, jarred food is cooked at extremely high temperatures to kill bacteria for longer storage, at the same time taking out many of the food’s vitamins and nutrients!


Wait! There’s more!


Often baby food has thickeners or water added which makes the flavor bland. When it comes time to introduce more solid forms of food, your baby will transition easier if you puree REAL food vs. feeding them a watered down, packaged version. If your baby likes your broccoli puree, they will find the same taste appealing with a piece of whole steamed broccoli!


So if that still hasn’t convinced you then PLEASE send me a comment and let me know what I’m missing. I’m also happy to answer any questions you might have about preparation, kitchen tools or storage.

Happy pureeing! 😊

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