Adventures in Baby Food: Mixed Veggies

Today I experimented with using frozen vegetables to make Amelia's food. I used chopped spinach, carrots, peas and the remainder of a bag of mixed veggies we had:


First I boiled a big pot of water. I added the veggies in the boiling water and waited for it to return to a boil:


Once everything was done cooking I pureed the mixture and ended up with this:


Look tasty? I am not sure how Amelia will take to it because the texture of it is different than she is used to. It is lumpier. We'll see what she thinks of it tomorrow I guess! It is a healthy mixture though!

The verdict on frozen veggies is: I liked them! The only thing I would do differently is use whole leaf spinach instead of chopped. It was a pain to try and get all the chopped spinach out of the water. I save the water to use to thin the puree so that any of the nutrients that I boiled out of the food will make it back in partially, therefore, straining is not an option.

Adventures in Baby Food: Pumpkin & Squash

Last weekend Jason and I made baby food together for once. Friday night we cleaned out 2 pie pumpkins:


and an acorn squash and a butternut squash:


We baked them in the oven for about an hour and a half (until they were soft):


(I just liked this picture because you can see how hot they were)

When they were finished baking we were really tired. We put the baked pumpkins and squash into the refridgerator but first we had to get them to cool down...so we put them in front of the fan:


The next morning I pureed the pumpkin before work:


Sunday Jason pureed the acorn squash and Monday he pureed the butternut squash. All in all we got about eight trays of baby food cubes. Not bad considering Jason used some of the butternut squash to make a soup (which we have yet to eat...).

This adventure was spread over 4 days but it finally got done! It is hard to do anything when your baby is sick! Amelia tried some pumpkin for the first time yesterday and according to Jason, "it went right down". It'll be fun for Amelia to have a festive food for the season! On Thanksgiving she can have her own pumpkin food!

Adventures in Baby Food: Avacado

My sister visited over the weekend and asked if we could make baby food, so we did! First we made avacados. I decided I wanted to give Amelia avacados as a baby because they are full of so many nutrients and good things for her. We started out with 5 avacados:


I cut them in half and scooped them clean:


Once I had filled the food processor with avacado, I added a little water and lemon juice (lemon juice to help keep them green (not brown)) and pureed them. They turned out nice and thick and smooth:


I got more out of those 5 avacados than I thought I was going to, so that was a nice suprise!


I love the color of these:


Amelia will get her first taste of these this weekend! I hope she likes them :)

Adventures in Baby Food: Carrots

My sister and I also made carrots over the weekend! We started out with 2 bags of carrots which Kim peeled while I, picked up our work area. She peeled one and a half bags (I left a half a bag to make soup with soon):


Next I cut the carrots up into little pieces:


After that we put them into a pan with some water, covered it and "steamed" them:


They were ready pretty quickly because the carrots were so thin to begin with. I pureed them and put them into trays to freeze:


While I was filling the trays my sister did all the dishes so we could get ready for our next adventure/project. Amelia doesn't seem to like my carrots as much as the Gerber ones, the consistency is different. I know she will get used to mine though. It just might take awhile!

Adventures in Baby Food: Sweet Potatoes

Last night I jumped the gun and made baby sweet potatoes, before the 4-day trial period... I read online that very few babies have allergies to sweet potatoes, which is why they are a good first food, so I figured I'd just get them made while I had a night to do it. Plus, making them was constructive procrastination on schoolwork :)

I started out with 8 sweet potatoes, of various sizes:


After poking a few holes in each and covering the pan with foil, I put them into the oven, preheated to 400 F and baked them for a little over an hour. Once I pulled them out I split them all in half and let them cool down:


Once they were cool I removed the "meat" from the skins and put them aside in a bowl. I found that the couple larger potatoes were not quite tender in the middle, so I put the tougher chunks into a bowl and microwaved them while I worked with the tender ones. I put the sweet potato mash into the food processor:


Added some water to each batch and I ended up with exactly what I hoped for, a smooth puree:


I got a TON of baby food out of those eight potatoes! I couldn't believe how much I ended up with. 6 ice cube trays (well, almost, one was only partial so I left it out of the picture):


I spent $4.80 on the potatoes and ended up with around 50 servings (based on the notion of 2 cubes per serving), I was really excited! When it came time to remove all the cubes from the trays, I didn't have a container large enough so I put some into a ziploc, for the time being.


I am going to look into some larger containers that I can use solely for baby food. And I just have to remember that our freezer isn't enormous...so I had better make sure I have room to store everything I make! After my pear misfortunes I was very glad that this adventure turned out perfect!

Adventures in Baby Food: Pears, Take 2

So, this morning I decided to re-work that "pear-sauce". I removed it from the freezer and put the cubes into a large pot. I melted them all down:


Once they were melted I let them cook for a little bit. Next I went to the food processor and once again put the pears into it. I did a little bit at a time, adding water periodically, and I got a much better result:


It was still not the consistency I had hoped for, but this is much better! Amelia had some just a bit ago and she ate them (and only made one face in the process). Next time I will start with even riper pears, as I stated last night, and I think I will also cook them. I used the "e-how" recipe (which is where I got the applesauce intructions) and it said cooking was not necessary. I have found on a few other sites this morning that they are saying to cook the pears. So, I will cook them next time and hope for a smooth puree as the result!

Adventures in Baby Food: Pears

Well, this adventure did not turn out as well as the apples one did. That is ok though! The process for pears was similar to applesauce. The only thing different was that I did not need to cook the pears.

I started with 8 ripe pears. Cut 'em up, put them in the food processor and "pureed" them... Well, I ended up with what I am calling "pear-sauce". I have no idea why they didn't puree smoothly. They are nowhere near like the baby pears from the store! I will use even riper pears next time I think and see what happens.

I figure this "pear-sauce" is still pears, still nutritious for Amelia and she likes applesauce so why not try "pear-sauce"? I hope she eats it! I splurged and got her organic pears from Whole Foods, so if she doesn't like "pear-sauce" it will be a bit more money wasted...but again, it's pears, she likes pears...she also likes applesauce, so she SHOULD like this, right?

Anyways, I didn't take pictures through the whole process this time since it was virtually identical to making applesauce but here is what I ended up with:


I put a few servings aside in baby food jars, as I did with the applesauce, to use tomorrow and Friday. I will have to let you all know how the "pear-sauce" goes over with the princess...

Adventures in Baby Food: Applesauce

This morning I made my first batch of baby food for Miss Amelia. I made her applesauce. I started out with ten gala apples:


I peeled them and cut them up. (I dropped one apple into the garbage during this process, woops) I then placed them in a pot full of water to boil them:


I boiled them until they were fork-tender. I then placed them into the food processor:


(thanks for getting this for us mom and dad, it made this a breeze!)

Once the apples were pureed, I put half into a bowl and added the leftover water from boiling to the other half. I ran that through the processor one more time until the applesauce was to the consistency I wanted. Then I repeated this with the other half of the pureed apples:


When I was finished I put the applesauce into ice cube trays and put 4 servings into re-used baby food containers for tomorrow and Saturday:


Later this evening, I put the frozen applesauce cubes into a storage container:


From what I have read, a typical serving will be two cubes. So, including the servings in the fridge, I got about 20 servings of apples out of 9 apples. The entire process took me just over an hour with most of the time spent peeling and slicing the apples. Next time I will get Jason to help and we can probably shave about twenty minutess off of the process!

I can't wait to make more foods for her! Making our own baby food is going to save us so much money and it feels good to be making our own food for Amelia.