Making Baby Food

I already told you that I love my babycook.

It makes making baby food so quick and easy.

I enjoy making Olivia's food, and I'm pretty proud of the fact that she is getting the best, most natural food possible.

So I thought for any of you moms out there that may be interested, I'd share how it works.

First, it comes with a little booklet that tells you exactly how much water to use to steam each food and vegetable.  You then just fill to the line.  We use bottled water because sometimes the water is reused (I'll explain that in a minute).

For line one foods it takes about 5 minutes to steam.  For line 2 it takes about 10 minutes and for line 3 it takes about 15 minutes.

You then pour the water into the steamer side.

There is a little steamer basket that sets inside the main compartment.

On this day I was making pears.

I cut the pears up and put them in the basket.

I leave the skin on for apples and pears.  

That is another reason why I buy organic. (Obviously I still wash them well before steaming.)

Leaving the skin on helps keep in more of the nutrients.  You can blend them with our without the skin.  I have blended the skin on with apples for more fiber.  I have also made both apples and pears by peeling the skin off after they are steamed.

Then you just put the compartment on the cooker.  It locks in place.

Then click to the steam side.

It knows how long to steam the food by how much water your poured in.

It's done steaming when the light goes off.

It comes with this little spoon type tool to lift the basket out.

Since I wanted to take the peels off of the pears, I let them sit for a little bit.

Taking the peels off added maybe an extra 5 minutes to the process.

Keeping the basket out, you put the food into the main processor.

Here is where that extra steamed water comes into play.  Pears (and apples) are already pretty liquid-y.  They don't need extra water to thin them out.  Other foods such as sweet potatoes need the water.  So you would take the water that was used to steam the food and use it here to help thin your food out to the right consistency.

Blend to preferred consistency

I used 2 1/2 pears and it made 10 ounces of baby food.

So at most it took me 30 minutes to make a weeks worth of breakfasts. 

(She won't eat pears every day for breakfast.  We'd be having a problem then! :)  I'm just giving an example.)

Besides homemade food being healthier, it is way cheaper!

I bought a bag of frozen green beans for $1. (Remember to look under ingredients if you do this.  It should just say green bean or peas.  You don't want any added ingredients!)  That dollar bag of green beans made 14 ounces of puree.  That is 7 of my little "jars".  If I was buying baby food, $1 would get me ONE jar. Maybe two.

We buy organic for some fruits and vegetables.  Especially ones on the dirty dozen.  We buy frozen for ones that are out of season (i.e. peaches) or would be more work than it's worth (i.e. peas).

About an hour a week and this is what we have

Ahh, this picture makes me so happy! :)

SOLIDS!!!

Olivia turned 6 months on Friday and we decided to start "solids" just a few days before.  Like most things, solids aren't done the same way these days as they once were.  Back in the day it was always "start with rice cereal, then do all the vegetables before doing fruit".  The thought process was that fruit is sweet and if you give sweet stuff first, then they won't eat the veggies.  That has sort of been proven wrong in the recent years.  Besides, breast milk is SUPER sweet, so that thinking doesn't even really make sense. Plus, I figure with formula that smells (and probably tastes) like dog food, all food has to taste better than that. Also, you no longer have to start with the cereals.  Since I am making my own baby food, I've been using a few different resources.  One website that I use is found here if you are interested.

Going off the advice of that website and my pediatrician, we started with avocado.  

(Apparently this is shocking to some most people!? :) )

I'm not sure how much she actually ate.  She was trying to figure out what to do with it.  She kept gagging too.  I don't think it was because she didn't like the taste.  It might have been a texture thing.  The next night I added more water to the smashed avocado to make it even thinner.  She still gagged. She got into it a little more, but was still trying to figure out what this whole thing was all about.  We also broke out the high chair.

 (As you can see, we played a little before eating.)

By the third day she was all about the solids.  She was opening her mouth for the spoon, leaning her head forward, and looking for more.  She also was done with the gagging.  I guess she got use to swallowing.  She might have eaten a little more than she needed to that night.  She ended up puking some of it out later. :(

So far we've been doing it at night.  Since she's still learning what it's all about (and pretty much has a constant fountain of drool coming out of her mouth), it's sort of messy.  We go right from there to the bath.  We aren't being super strict about it.  Babies main source of nutrition is suppose to come from formula/breast milk the first year.  Solids are "just for fun" at this point.  There have been two nights where we weren't home, so we skipped solids those days.  If she was underweight or a preemie then I may be more anal about it.  At this point I'm just going with the flow.  We went from avocados to sweet potatoes.  She seems to like them.  I'm still trying to decide what we are going to do next.  She has a few more days of sweet potato (following the 4 times rule).  I'm thinking peas...or maybe bananas.

Here is the video of her trying the avocados for the first time.