Food for Baby

Did I mention to you that I am making Truman's baby food? Does that make me a crazy person, to add one more thing to my 'To Do' list or does it just make me more of a crunchy tree-hugger mama? Not sure, but I really do love it and it doesn't take that much time at all.

This is the website that is my 'Bible' of sorts when it comes to making baby food. Tons of ideas and tips and recipes for the babes and it's really well organized.

We started veggie purees right at six months and although our first choice of peas were an epic failure, we kept plugging away. In fact, I thawed all of the original peas and re-pureed them to see if I could get them smoother. I did, in fact, smooth them out but alas, Truman still hates peas. Guess we'll have to mix them into something else eventually.

So far I have made: peas, butternut squash, sweet potato, avocado, bananas (hasn't tried them yet), apples (hasn't tried them yet), and peaches. I also bought carrots and green beans, instaed of making them, because I heard both of those are very hard to make smooth enough and it was a lot easier to let Gerber do the dirty work. :) Truman loves all of the veggies except those nasty peas and we just started fruits, with peaches being our first pick, this week. Of course he has a sweet tooth like his parents and already scarfs the peaches down like none other.

What works for me: I make a big batch of a few different foods at one time. For instance, I made apples, peaches, sweet potatoes, and squash on Sunday night. They looked so pretty while baking I had to snap some pics:)

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I picked Braeburn apples this time around and hope Truman likes them as much as I do! We are waiting on apples and also bananas so that he doesn't get too constipated. His bowel movements deserve a whole separate post but I'll spare you the deets. Let's just say we will stick to peaches for a bit. :)
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Millions of peaches, peaches for me...
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And squash is one of his top picks, for sure. It makes a TON of frozen cubes, too.
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Ice trays, ice trays, who has the ice trays?
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All of the foods (except bananas and avocados) need to be cooked somehow and usually baking is the best way to preserve the nutrients. We add just a bit of water to a pan and then put the foods face down in it, skin and all (for the sweet potatoes just poke holes in them and wrap in tin foil). Then you either put the whole thing in a sweet Magic Bullet or scoop out the 'meat' part and just blend that smooth. Pop the puree into ice cubes, let them freeze, then pull them out and store in ziploc bags. Voila--homemade baby food. You can thaw the cubes out in the fridge or even in the microwave if needed. Easy peasy.

I will usually add some water as I blend the foods but not too much--I tend to water it down right before I give it to Truman, so when I freeze it the food is still pretty thick. You can even add breastmilk to thin it out or sometimes once you thaw the cubes it naturally thins out by itself so no need to add anything at all. If it's too thin I usually add a bit of rice cereal or oatmeal cereal to thicken it up. It just depends on the food, I guess.

We tried using our nice Cuisinart blender but it was so big and bulky and hard to clean that we bought a Magic Bullet and I love using it for baby purees. It's the perfect size and cleans up easily, plus it gets the purees very smooth (ie no gagging for baby boy).

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See this random giant sweet potato? Yeah, it didn't cook fast enough and I was ready for bed before it was ready that night, so we popped it half cooked in the fridge. I think this is hilarious and random so I took a pic. And then the next day I tried to re-cook it fully and it never softened up so I tossed it and stuck with just one tray full of s.potatoes. No biggie.
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And the final result? Lots of fun little baggies-o-purees. I love all the colors. And yes, I froze banana puree and know that makes them a bit brown. Not too worried about it. The avocado also froze well, too, if you were wondering.
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Any questions?

Because there is no posting without Truman pics let's move onto a few food-related videos, shall we?

Carrots (store bought!) were a huge hit. So was blowing raspberries while eating them.


Amoxicillan was NOT a big hit. In fact, he hated the bubble gum stuff. It's really quite funny now but was rather stressful at the time.


And this has nothing to do with food, but it's a super-cute video and I sound totally deranged in it. So maybe it will brighten your day a bit, too.

And no, his Halloween outfit is NOT a monkey outfit. I was referring to a every-day outfit with monkeys on it and he thought I was hilarious. But his Halloween costume has arrived and it's going to be totally badass. Top secret for now!

(Still working on that 'traveling with baby' post too, now that I'm a seasoned vet and have flown with Truman on two round-trips including one way by myself with a sick baby. Lots of tips to share)

18 comments:

  1. Very impressive! I'm hoping to make my own baby food, thanks for the link to that website :)

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  2. adorableness... just adorable.

    Brady hated pureed peas, but he LOVES him some peas now. He pops them in his mouth and goes to town. I've heard that a lot so thought i'd pass that along :)

    weeclicious.com is another great website and i have a few more, im gonna do a post on it :)

    and ps, yes, PT=retreat bc no babies hanging on my legs or clients yelling at me :)

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  3. I love this! I'm sure I'll be coming back to it in the future, as I do with a lot of your posts like this. I'm definitely planning to make our own baby food, but my little one is only 1 month old, so it's a ways off for us still.

    I do have a random question for you that I've been meaning to e-mail you about. I know you're using Tommee Tippee bottles (at least partially), and that's what we've chosen to use for our baby, too. She's taken to them pretty well, but she is only getting one bottle a day at this point. Anyway, we're in a wedding on Saturday and it'll be the first time she has multiple bottles in a day. How do you transport/keep cool your Tommee Tippee bottles of milk? The only "cooler" I have so far is the one that came with my Medela pump... it has an ice pack, but the way it's shaped, it's made the Medela bottles and the TTs don't fit. Just curious what you do since you transport Truman and his milk to daycare every day. Thanks! :)

    P.S. I think I spy Dr. Brown's bottles in your fridge? Do you use those as well? How nice that Truman switches from TT to Avent to DB without issue! And is there an orange band of some sort around the bottle? Is that some sort of dating system? I've been trying to figure out a way to keep things straight in the fridge, and would love to know if there is a product out there meant for that, if that's the case. (And if I'm crazy and that's nothing of the sort, just ignore me!)

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  4. Oh, thanks for the link! I want to make my own baby food too, so that will help out a lot :). I love the last video- happy babies make me happy!

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  5. Great post! I am still a month away from my due date, but my good friend bought me 100 Baby Purees by Annabel Karmel and it is great!

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  6. Love making Isaac's food. I've made carrots - it was no biggie - but I agree that green beans are hard. Now that he eats thing more chunky though, it doesn't matter.

    Love the medicine video! Too cute. We had a syringe like that and I HATED it because medicine gets left in the end...we actually ended up short antibiotics by an entire 2 days because of that stupid syringe. We have a different one now that is much better.

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  7. Truman is so cute! What a precious laugh :) And you are super mom with the food!

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  8. Hailey also LOVED peaches. She's finally getting to be a good eater. Except we tried beef yesterday, not a fan at all. And it smells like cat food. GAG

    Watch out when you try banana, it will stain unless you don't get it off while wet.

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  9. Those vids were awesome - I especially loved the amoxicillin one :) I dread the day we have to give Annie medicine. The few times we've given her gas drops or tylenol have been a battle. Truman was so chill about it! Like, no big thang, I'll just clamp my mouth shut. No noises, just not gonna open my mouth!

    I make Annie's food too and I honestly haven't even found it that hard! It's a great way to use up veggies from our farm share that we don't feel like eating :) Luckily Annie never liked really thin smooth purees anyway, so making green beans and carrots wasn't an issue. The very first time we fed her green beans she gagged a little, but seemed to get used to it quick.

    Oh, and pears are another good fruit with a laxative effect, similar to peaches :)

    Just one more thing - I got a little lazy after making apples once - the whole peeling step and all. So now I just buy a big jar of organic natural applesauce (made sure the only ingredient was organic apples) and just freeze that in cubes. Much easier and at $3.50 for the jar it was probably cheaper too.

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  10. Ya for homemade baby food. I liked to steem the sweet potatoes with my veggie steemer. They were supper fast. and bake squash in the crockpot. Augustine loves squash. Peas were not his fav at the beginning. Now at 10.5 months he loves them frozen to pop into his mouth.

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  11. So impressed! I really wanted to do Isaac's food, but time just got away from me. You totally make it look easy! Nice work!

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  12. Your post reminded me to get sweet potatoes in the oven for my 8 month old.

    Love the pictures.

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  13. I made some of Landon's baby food and plan on making a bunch for Brigham this Sunday.

    We have a magic bullet and it's awesome!

    Thanks for sharing. Made me hungry. Purees for a 31-year-old anyone?

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  14. I was just telling Jeff that I needed to find a website for making baby food. Thank you for sharing!

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  15. Great examples of making the baby food. It is way easier than one might initially imagine. Our little guy is 8 months and one idea I have for you is to try adding some more flavor to the purees. When I puree pears I add a drop or two of vanilla and some cinnamon. To sweet potatoes I load it up with paprika, to squash cinnamon and nutmeg. My little guy hated peas to, until I seasoned them with paprika. BF babes have an expanded palette due to the flavor of your milk tasting slightly different based on what you've eaten. Once his doc recommended adding meat to his diet I just started pureeing our dinner, now he enjoys meals of salmon, brown rice, and brocoli or whatever low sodium balanced meal we're eating. Anyway, I love meal time!

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  16. Making baby food makes sense for us breastfeeding, cloth diapering mamas. We got a vitamix for xmas and it is the best invention in the world! Highly recommend it. We still use it everyday to make smoothies for Keenan - throw a whole carrot in (or kale, broccoli, apples, whatever) and it emulsifies it in secs. I am a walking ad apparently :) Enjoy the baby food as it only gets better with "real" people food.

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  17. I got all my gear for baby food awhile back and I'm so excited. I bought a book from Amazon and plan on using lots of those recipes [well, they actually turn into "recipes" once baby is a little older]. We're starting rice cereal on Sunday! This should be fun :)

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  18. You are such a crafty little Mama! Love this post...that baby of yours keeps getting more and more precious!

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