Baby Food

Now that my girl has hit the 1/2 year mark, its time for baby food.  We tried some rice cereal and that went well, so I am moving on to fruits and veggies.  With my son, I cooked some foods, but mainly depended on commercial foods by a company called Earth's Best, they are all organic, no GMO's and have no added sugar.  I will probably still use them when I travel.  However, for my day to day use, I have decided to make my own baby food.  I found this video that gave step by step directions for making your own food.  It was very simple, it didn't take a lot of time and was under $10 to purchase the produce.  I made apples, green beans and yams.  The bananas I simply put in a bowl and mashed them with a fork until they were pureed.

For the apples:  Using a medium sized dutch oven, I filled it with about 3 cups of filtered water and left it to boil.  Meanwhile, you can wash, peel, core and cut the apples into chunks.  Once the water is boiling, add your apple chunks and leave them to boil for about 10 minutes, or until the apples are soft.  Next, scoop the apples out of the pot into a blender or food processor.  You can add  1/4-1/2 cup of water from the pot to the blender as well.  Blend until apples are smooth.  Place in a glass container and put them aside to cool.

For the green beans: I did the same process as with the apples, except I just trimmed and washed them.

For the sweet potatoes: I heated the oven to 375 degrees, washed the yams and pierced them with a fork then placed them inside and let them bake for about 45 minutes.  When they were finished I removed the skin, placed them in the blender and blended them until smooth.  I added a little of the water from the apples, as well.

This is how they all came out.  I let them cool a short while and then placed them in breast milk bags for storage in the freezer.  The bags are good because they have measurements on them.  Another good option is ice cube trays, each cube is equivalent to 1 oz.

I ended up with about 8 oz. in each bag, and with her taking about 2-4 oz per day, at this point, this will last for a good amount of time.  It's good in the freezer for 6-8 months, just make sure you get the air out of the bag completely.

Enjoy!