Making Baby Food

I've decided to try making  baby food.  It is cheaper and supposedly very easy to do.  This will be a very uninteresting and long post if you are not ever going to make baby food.  Prob not worth the read, but if you will ever make baby food here ya go, straight up Pioneer Woman style. (If you don't know who PW is, you are missing out).  We shall see how this goes...

These are the things you need:

Steamer, ice cube trays (I bought silicone $8, yes I know that is outrageous), freezer bags, and blender/food processor.  That is really all you have to have, but I also bought the book Superfoods by Annabel Karmel ($12), small glass bowels to travel with food for daycare ($8), and that cute zebra lunch bag just because it was so adorable ($13, yes I know outrageous again, but I need it:).  My expense for materials was $41. Once again all you really need that I bought are the ice cube trays.   I am telling you how much everything is because my mom does not believe it will be cheaper.  They make these machines to help with baby food, but reading all the so-so reviews I couldn't justify spending the money when I already have a great steamer and blender.  I am also freaky about heating foods in plastic (holla MM!) and couldn't find any machine that would do the steaming and blending in one that was made of glass.

First you have to steam the veggies.  You can boil or bake, but steaming helps them retain the most nutrients.  It took about 15 min for them to become soft enough.  This is how my dad eats them:)

Next, you throw them in the blender or food processor.  Thin with some kind of liquid.  I used breast milk to make it familiar.  You can do formula or the water left over from steaming (except with carrots, spinach, beets, cabbage, and broccoli which are high in nitrates and that does something to babies, see how scientific I am!  read more here ).

Then you put them into the ice cube trays.  Each cube is 1 oz (3 tbs).

Let them cool in the fridge for a little while.  Throw them in the freezer.  Next day pop them out of the ice cube trays and put them in freezer bags with the name and date of food.  Super easy.

If you want more info I used this site and the book mentioned above, but I bought it more to help with mixing foods and cooking protein in the future.  I checked it out at the library before I bought it, so you could find it there too.  I will finish making all my food and then post my cost analysis for ya.