Homemade Baby food

Every time I walk past the baby food isle in the grocery store I find myself wondering: do people really feed their babies that?

I mean on a regular basis. There are circumstances where I can definitely see buying jarred baby food – like on a long car trip or something. It’d just be easier. But at home? I just can’t imagine. Probably because my mom didn’t use baby food.

With Garrett there are a number of reasons why I never bought baby food.

First off – well, it never really entered my mind.

Secondly, we have our own organic veggies, and I have no intention of buying canned and frankly, inferior products to feed him.

Third, what’s the point? How hard is it to mash up a little sweet potato?

One of Garrett’s first foods was banana. I cut it into little chunks and froze it on a cookie sheet so that when I was ready to feed him, all I had to do was grab a chunk out of the freezer and thaw it. (I later cut bananas out of his diet almost completely – they seem to constipate him.)

Though most of the time we fed Garrett from our plates as much as possible, I kept some homemade baby food around for the times we were eating things he couldn’t handle for dinner.

There were two main ways I did this:

• Frozen, diced veggies – Most of the baby food we made for Garrett was steamed, diced veggies such as sweet potatoes, carrots, butternut squash, etc. that were flash frozen on cookie sheets, and stored in zip-top baggies. That way I could could grab however many I thought he’d eat out of the bag, and since they were in small pieced, they thawed out very quickly. The other thing I loved about this, is that when he got old enough, they were the perfect size for him to grab and feed himself.
• Pureed veggies frozen in ice cube trays – I think this is the most popular method of MYO baby food. I have friends who do this. I’ve done it for a few things – like mashed avocado, and it’s nice for when the baby is small enough that he/she needs only pureed stuff, or if you have plenty of time to thaw it.

Either of these methods is great, though I definitely prefer the convenience of the first one.

Though it may seem like your not throwing away too much money on baby food at $.50-$1 a jar, you’d be surprised at how quickly the savings of making your own stack up – especially as the baby gets older and starts going through more than one jar a day, and if you’re getting good, organic baby food which is the only thing even close to comparable to what we make ourselves.

These days, Garrett eats almost exclusively what we eat – I just thawed the last sweet potato chunks out of the freezer a few days ago. We’ve been blessed with a baby who enjoys diverse and strong flavors, and he loves anything covered with marinara sauce, or sausage.

If you have other ideas for making your own baby food, please leave a comment because I’d love to hear about them!