Mommy-Made Baby Food

"Why is fresh best? Perhaps the most convincing argument for opting for fresh, homemade baby food is its superior flavor. Compare a fresh, juicy Barlett pear to a jar of baby puree. If the pears don't convince you which tastes better, then try the carrots or even the jarred purreed meats with a shelf life of two years. No wonder we grew up hating our vegetables! Babies react happily to good smells and vibrant colors as much as they do to vibrant tastes.

   Perhaps you're willing to trade taste for convenience. But we know for your baby's sake you won't be happy trading ease for nutrients. Did you know that the high temperatures necessary to give canned foods their long shelf life kill many of the nutrients in the very foods they're preserving? (The percentages are alarming. For thiamine, important for steady nerves, it's 69 percent lost; for vitamin C, which builds a strong immune system, it's 64% lost.) Water and air are commonly whipped into commercially jarred baby foods to give them a fluffy, smooth-as-silk texture, further diluting their vitamin and mineral content. When you make it fresh, you can avoid sugar, salt, artificial colors, fillers, additives, and preservatives; all you get is the simple, pure taste of the food itself, its nutrients intact.

   With your own fresh baby food, you can also be sure of the quality, source, and safety of your ingredients-- a considerable concern in this age of widespread spraying of fruits and vegetables with pesticides, hormone-injected meats, and baby food tampering. And by preparing your own fresh food, you can offer your baby more variety.

   We've seen firsthand the impact that food allergies and nutrition can have on learning and behavior, and once you have that experience it's difficult to continue thinking that it doesn't much matter what you feed your children. At no other time in your child's life is nutrition more important than in the first years. In the first 12 months yoru baby will triple his weight and grow 10 to 12 inches. By age three he will have doubled his height. Throughout this period 20 teeth will emerge; your baby will learn to walk, talk, and feed himself; and brain growth will be unsurpassed at any other time in his life. It's the nutrients in his food that make all this possible!"(30:intro)

Want to Make Your Own Baby Food? Here's How!

The first food should be infant rice cereal. After this, you alternate by introducing a new food from a different food group, one at a time, spread out by at least 4 days so you can watch for any negative or allergic reactions. (I posted a handy chart below of what foods to introduce, and when.) All the grains listed can be introduced in the form of pre-made infant cereal. The rest can all be prepared freshly home-made.

The preparation is pretty simple. Just cook the food (roast in the oven or steam it), and then puree to the desired consistency in a blender or food processor.

Start with very smooth, thin purees, and as your baby is ready for more texture start to prepare it thicker. To thin a food, add water or breast milk or formula. To thicken it, add rice cereal. It's really that easy! There are a lot of hyped up recipes out there if you want to fuss with them. But since babies shouldn't have salt or sugar the first year anyway, there really is no reason to do any more than cook a food til it's mushy and then puree it. You'd be surprised how flavorful it really is, even though that's all you do. There's no need to complicate it. If you want to make hyped up recipes just because you think that sounds fun, then check out this Baby Food Recipes website. Otherwise, just cook it and blend it and quit while you're ahead!

My Muffy Method of Storing and Freezing the Babyfood

I make decently large sized batches and freeze the extras so that way I only fix it about once a week, or less. And when I don't feel like fixing it, I pull some out of the freezer.

My method of storage is this: After preparing the baby food, I put a few days worth into my Rubbermaid Premier (this stuff ROCKS!), which I label with the food name and date and stick in the fridge. (I think this is the BEST plasticware on the market! Buy it at WalMart. Anyway, the plastic on the lid is slicker than normal so you can write directly on it with a wet erase marker & it washes off in the dishwasher! Fabulous!)

I put the rest of the food into some Jumbo Silicone Muffin Cups to freeze. This way I get a variety of extras in the freezer to go back for later. I used to freeze it in icecube trays, but it took me longer to spoon the food into the little compartments, and some foods were hard to pop out. I love my new muffin cup method b/c I just dump the food in quickly & easily (no spooning) and pop it out easily (the muffin cups peel right off). Then I just put my frozen muffys (muffin cups of baby yumminess) into a labeled freezer bag. I use a Food Saver which sucks out all the air and makes them stay fresh for ever and a day, but before I had that I used Ziplocs.

Anyway, when I'm ready to use some of the freezer food, I just put a muffy cup in the fridge to defrost. It's a couple days' worth of food, which is the amount I like to thaw at once anyway. And both of our little guys have been just fine w/ eating their food cold, (I think it feels nice on teething gums!) so once it's defrosted I serve as-is, and have a happy camper!

Here's My Handy Reference Chart

   Here's the chart I reference... (It's an altered version of one in the book Mommy Made and Daddy Too! Home Cooking for a Healthy Baby & Toddler
.) If some of the produce listed isn't currently available, just move on to the next one that is...

BABYFOODCHART

The following foods should not be served to your baby during the first year:
   -   white table sugar
   -   artificial sweeteners
   -   corn syrup
   -   shellfish
   -   egg whites or uncooked yolks
   -   fried foods
   -   unripened fruit
   -   chocolate and candy
   -   honey
   -   uncooked onions
   -   junk food such as potato chips
   -   tomatoes
   -   corn
   -   processed meat: hot dogs, bologna, salami, bacon, etc.

Click here to download the baby food introduction chart shown
above to print and post inside a kitchen cabinet for reference.

Don't forget to check out What's New on my site! And sign up for email updates HERE!!

Want to leave comments? Go HERE! :)

Related Articles:
Healthy Babies, Age 0-1
Healthy Toddlers, Age 1-2

Recommended Reading:
If you are considering making your own baby food, and this page didn't make it sound simple enough, I'd highly recommend buying Mommy Made *and Daddy too! Home Cooking For A Healthy Baby & Toddler. But it really is just as simple as cooking the food, pureeing it, and freezing the leftovers. You can do it! :)

Disclaimer: The information given on this site is for informational purposes only.
It is not a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment.