Mommy Tip Tuesday

Yay! I am finally doing another Mommy Tip Tuesday! Today I am talking baby food. I like to make my own baby food when baby is first starting eating. I like to do it for the following reasons:

1. It is cheaper than buying jar baby food.
2. I know exactly what is in the food, no preservatives.
3. It is easy.
4. When I run out of baby food, I can just make more. No need to rush to the store.
5. It tastes so much better than baby food from the jar. If it tastes better to me, it should taste better to baby.

So, I make a bunch of different kinds of baby food and I do them all pretty much the same way. Here is how I made applesauce and sweet potatoes last night.

3 Apples

1/2 t of Cinnamon

2 Sweet Potatoes

2 T Brown Sugar

Water (amount unknown)

Peel and cut apple and sweet potato into 1/2 inch chunks.

Put two inches of water in a sauce pan and put on high heat. Put a steaming pot on top of the boiling water. Put the apple chunks or sweet potato (one at a time) into the steamer. Put lid on pot. Steam until the food slides right off the fork when stabbed.

Put the food into a blender. Add water from the sauce pan to the blender. How much you ask? Enough to be able to blend the food. More if you want a thinner food. I do a lot of water when baby is first starting to eat because baby has a hard time getting down thick food.

In the Apple blender, add half a teaspoon of cinnamon for flavor. It will make it taste more like applesauce you find at the store.

In the Sweet Potato blender, add 2 Tablespoons of brown sugar. This will sweeten the sweet potatoes and make them more yummy.

Taste all the food you make. If you don't like it, baby certainly isn't going to like it.

For first time food eaters, blend to death. For babies who have been eating a while blend to a slightly chunky consistency. Each baby is different as to what they can handle.

Then, pour the blended food into ice cube trays. I have regular ice cube trays, but I also got a silicone bottom tray from the dollar section at Target. Which works great for getting the food out once it is frozen. I need to buy some more of those.

You can also put your baby food in jars and store it in the fridge. I usually put a little into a tupper to give to feed to baby right away.

Freeze the ice cube trays until baby food is a nice solid block of ice. I usually stick them in the deep freeze to get them super solid. Then, pop the baby food out of the trays, put the cubes in a labeled freezer bag and pop it back in the freezer. Be careful when you are popping the cubes out of the trays, you may just snap your tray in half if it is too frozen... like what happened to Matt the other day.

Then, when it is time for a meal, take out a cube or two, stick it in the microwave for twenty seconds and you have fresh baby food. Tadah!

Dan was trying apples and sweet potatoes for the first time yesterday. He loved the apples, and felt unsure about the sweet potatoes.

I also found this website complete with baby food recipes. Which I have not tried, but I plan on it. They do it a little different. They use a frying pan and saute the food rather than steam. It takes a little longer than just steaming them, but maybe it is yummier, I don't know.