Baby Food Making

Today on this lovely Sunday Fall day, I spent my morning making Collins "hopefully" a month or so of baby food. I know when I started researching baby food finding other women's blogs on how they did it really helped me so I thought I'd do the same for those of you that read mine :) Let me say that I don't pretend to know what I am doing, I researched how to's and based most things off of the pamphlet that came with my baby bullet. Some veggies I bought organic and some I didn't. My reasoning behind that was because of the pesticides that I read about online. I am learning as I go and hope that this might help another fellow momma out there that might be in the same boat as me. Oh and I only burned myself once.

I went to our local Caputo's and bought some new fruits and veggies and some that I already know Collins loves from the past few weeks. I bought organic peas and carrots, leftover butternut squash (her favorite), sweet potatoes, avocados, peaches, apples, pears, and bananas.

 

The 2 bags of frozen organic peas were 2.99$ a bag, I got the 2 sweet potatoes for .48$, the bananas (4) for .56$, the organic carrots that came in a bunch of 7 for 2.99$, 3 pears for 1.11$, 3 peaches for 1.37$, 2 butternut squashes for 2.62$, and the 3 apples (Michigan Gala) on sale for .53$. My total was less than 20$.

 

 

The only two vegetables I cooked in the oven were the sweet potatoes and the squash. I cleaned the sweet potatoes and made tiny holes through out with a fork. Then wrapped them in tin foil and had them cook for 50 minutes on 450 degrees. At the same time I cooked the squash sliced in half, with the seeds taken out and laid upright on a cookie sheet for the same time and temp. After they were done, I skin them and place in the baby bullet for processing. I am not sure how much water I add but enough to get the consistency that I am looking for. Right now we are doing more of puree to get her used to eating. She is still using her "nursing" tongue and a lot of it comes out so we have to make sure we are there to help her, obviously.

 

The avocados and bananas are simple because you do not need to cook them. Same as the sweet potatoes and squash, enough water to get that puree consistency.

 

For the remaining vegetables and fruits I peeled the skin and then steamed each one by itself. Except the peas, those I just placed in the steamer obviously unpeeled (because I'm not even sure if you can peel peas hahaha) Steaming at least from what I read is better, as far as keeping the nutrients from the fruits and veggies and you can also use the water from steaming it to puree which I did with each food.

 

I was able to make a total of 143 ounces of baby food in 3 hours. 4 hours if you count the shopping part of it.

 

Three Pears-17oz of food

Three Peaches-17oz of food

Three Apples-6oz of food

Two Avocados-6oz of food

Seven Carrots-15oz of food

Two Squashes-24oz of food

Two Sweet Potatoes-28oz of food

Four Bananas-10oz of food

Two frozen bags of Peas-20oz of food

 

 

Most went into my freezer. Baby food stays good in the freezer for 30 days, and good in the fridge for about 3-4 days. I used my baby bullet storage cups, some glade cups, and other baby storage containers that I received from my baby shower. It is very time consuming however I was able to do most of it while Collins took her morning 2 hour nap. So far Collins is loving momma's home made food, and I cannot wait to experiment putting foods together and giving her different fruits and veggies. Big girl status in full effect :)