Making my own baby food...

As my blog title suggests...I am starting something new. Again.

For some reason this seemed daunting, like "Who do I think I am? I have no time, not enough storage etc. etc. Well the more and more I read about it, the more excited I got about it. I already plan our family meals, so what's a few extra veggies that I can steam/bake while cooking dinner? Nothing. Easy peasy.

My plan:
Each week prepare 1 fruit and 1 veggie. Then when Jocelyn is ready to start, I have a good supply.

She isn't eating ANY fruits and veggies just yet. We started her on rice cereal on January 12th, and started oatmeal this past Saturday. This is for two reasons. 1. She is a VERY hungry girl. It was going to start soon, so why not now? 2. There is a learning curve for a baby to learn to eat. I feed her about 1-2 teaspoons of cereal at dinner time when the rest of us sit down at the table to eat. I feel good about this because it starts a very good habit of all of us eating together. We go back and forth on this. In a perfect world we would eat dinner at the table together every night. We usually do it at least 5 times a week. Sometimes on the weekends we eat in the living room while watching a movie. Or just eat at different times. I am VERY pleased that during the week we all get to visit and check in with each others day. But I digress.

I read a lot at different websites about the who, what, when, where, why and how's of baby food. The very basic techniques, the warnings about nitrates, and the suggested ages for babies to eat certain things. It's been 7 years since I last looked into baby food stuff and I forgot a lot. My favorite website is www.wholesomebabyfood.com. Nothing fancy, just the ins and outs of baby food. Making. Storing. Tips.

I wrote out a list of what I wanted to do, and voila! I started tonight. I figured I would start with something fairly easy. Carrots. I went to Sam's and bought a huge bag of organic carrots. I don't always buy organic, just here and there when it seems to make sense. I also bought Gala apples. These weren't organic, but I will wash them good, and peel them. I think that will be fine enough to be "safe."

I first washed the baby carrots then put them in a large pot with lots of water, and turned on the stove. After they were cooking I went ahead and read the website again to make sure I didn't miss anything or forget anything. Organic? Check. Stick Blender? Check. Ice cube trays? Check. All seems good. Then I reread the part about steaming the carrots, and not boiling them. Oh well, close enough. Steamed carrots apparently are better because they retain more nutrients. I'll remember that for the next time.

After the carrots were fork tender I drained them. Retaining about 3-4 oz of the cooking water. I let it cool a few minutes. Then I took the stick blender and blended away. Stopping about every minute to give the batch a stir and check for lumps. All good. About 5 minutes later I was done. I transferred the puree into a large Ziploc bag. Snipped off the corner, and filled each cube in the two trays. 24 cubes later...and my bag was nearly empty. Not a bad estimate of how much I would need and not a lot waste.

I bought specific baby food ice cube trays. I liked them because they had a lid that sealed the tray, thus protecting them from things falling in the food or accidentally getting spilled because they got knocked over.

Rinsed off the dishes, loaded them in the dishwasher and less than an hour later I was done. An hour? Really? Well, it might have been about 45 minutes, but that was just the waiting for the carrots to be done, a little more waiting for the carrots to cool and washing up the dishes.

Tomorrow I will pop the cubes out of the tray. Transfer them into a Ziplock freezer bag. Label it with the date and "Carrots." The move on to apples.

My plan for the apples. Wash. Peel. Core. Cut into cubes. Place in pan. Add water to just cover the apples. Then cook until fork tender. Puree. Transfer to Ziploc bag, pipe into ice cube trays. Freeze.

Two days = 24 servings of carrots, 24 servings of fruit.