As many of you know, I have been making my baby's their food for years. This is something I truly believe helps me to set the foundation for healthy eating habits as they grow older. How, you may ask? Have you ever tried commercially made baby food? It generally does not taste like what we would cook and serve at our tables. A lot of flavor is lost during the processing of commercial baby food. Children like the familiar so if they are use to green beans tasting one way (from the jar) and you serve them fresh or frozen, chances are they will take a taste and reject them because the flavor is not what they are use to. Homemade baby food tastes truer to what nature intended, the flavors are much stronger and more vibrant, plus you can tailor the texture to your baby's needs.
Flavor is not the only benefit to homemade baby food. Nutritionally speaking, homemade food is far superior because it is fresh. Essential vitamins and minerals are broken down and lost during the jarring process. When you make your baby's food, you would take the food from the market or garden, to the steamer and to your baby, you know exactly what goes into each meal you serve your child and you know it hasn't been sitting on a shelf for months before making it to your baby.
Financially speaking, homemade baby food is much more cost efficient. Baby food costs about $1. a jar now. When baby first starts eating that may not seem like a lot, but as they grow so will their food intake and your grocery bill. When you make your own you can take advantage of store produce sales and create a week or two worth of food for less than a jar of baby food. As an example, last week my local market had cantaloupe for $0.88 each. I was able to take 1 cantaloupe and make almost two weeks worth of fruit for my baby. $0.88 for two weeks versus $1. a jar is a big difference, especially in this economy.
Ok, so you may be thinking, yeah it's better for my baby and costs less, but is this really something I can do or is this going to be time consuming and difficult. The answer is YES, this is something you can do and NO it doesn't take much time or effort. In 15 - 20 minutes you can have one to two weeks worth of food. All you need is a pot of boiling water, a steamer basket and a blender really. Cut your food, toss it into the basket over boiling water, pop on a lid and give it 10 minutes to steam (depends on how big you cut the food and how hard the food is, cauliflower will cook faster than say carrots), toss into the blender and puree. So now your thinking two weeks worth of food is not going to stay fresh in the fridge, your right. What I do is refrigerate only what my child will eat that day, the rest I put into ice cube trays and freeze, once solid I put in a freezer bag to use over the next two weeks or more depending on how ambitious I was. Now you have food cubes which are great for portioning out your baby's meals (defrost and heat or take directly from freezer to microwave for heating, takes about 30 - 45 seconds from frozen). An example of my 7 month old's daily intake, breakfast is a little rice cereal or oatmeal with 2 cubes of fruit, lunch is 1 cube of fruit, 1 cube of vegetable and a few Cheerios, dinner is rice cereal, 1 cube of fruit and 2 cubes of vegetable.
Homemade baby food is great, it is delicious, nutritious, inexpensive and easy. I hope you'll consider giving it a try. I know making baby food isn't for everyone, you do what works best for your family, this is just what works for mine.
