When my daughter was born, I was working full time at a job with varying shifts that brought me home anywhere between 3:30 and 7:30. Between fitting my baby’s schedule into my work schedule and trying to keep my husband fed and my house clean, making my own baby food was the last thing on my mind. That is, until I heard that my friend, a full-time nurse, was making her own baby food. If she could find the time, I certainly could. With that, I began some research. Truthfully, you can make a week or more worth of baby food in as little as an hour. I also learned that there are some basic rules to starting babies on solids as well as making your own baby food.
- Consult with your pediatrician about which foods to start at which ages.
- Follow the Four Day Wait Rule. After introducing a new food, wait four days to ensure that there is no reaction before starting another.
- Use clean hands, utensils, etc. when preparing the food.
- Don’t despair if your child balks at a certain food. Experiment with different textures, combinations, etc. Sometimes, a baby will eat a food mixed with baby cereal when they might refuse it plain.
A necessity for making homemade baby food is an appliance with the ability to puree food. Blenders, food processors, stick blenders, food mills, and specific baby food makers will all do the job. I used a combination of stick blender and food processor. Another must-have is a baby food making book or website that has simple recipes to get you started as well as charts for how to cook each vegetable to retain the most nutrients. I found that www.wholesomebabyfood.com met all of my needs. Unless your baby food maker comes with some sort of tray for freezing the food, you will need ice cube trays. After blending your purees, pour them into the ice cube tray and freeze. Once frozen, pop the cubes out and store in zipper bags with the name of the food and date you placed it into the freezer written on the bag.
With some forethought, you can defrost a few cubes night for the following day. Use small containers with lids and thaw the cubes in the refrigerator, pulling them out as needed throughout the day. I was often not that prepared and found that I could microwave the cubes in ten second intervals, stirring after each interval, until it was ready.
I typically would go to the farmer’s market on Friday or Saturday and load up with veggies for the following week. Then, on Sunday, while making dinner for my husband and myself, I would cook up one or two veggies or fruits to puree for our daughter for the week. Sometimes it was as easy as throwing an extra two sweet potatoes in the oven to bake with ours and other times it would involve peeling apples before cooking. The effort was minimal and the end result made me feel good about what I was feeding my child. As an added bonus, I was able to control the texture so that she was exposed to a variety of sensations. This made it easier to transition to solid food. When my son came along, I made his food and slowly started giving him chunkier food until he was completely on finger foods.
I loved making baby food because I could expose my child to flavors and control the quality of food that she ate. I added cinnamon to all my applesauce, ginger to carrots, etc. When my son wouldn’t eat spinach, I simply played the sneaky chef and mixed a spinach cube with another veggie such as sweet potatoes and added cereal. He then ate up the cubes I had made so none went to waste. I found an added bonus to be that while daughter consistently had a reaction to jarred baby food, with the homemade food, she did not. The best part of making homemade baby food, though, was that I felt like I was doing something good for my children. I was unable to breastfeed and felt plenty of guilt as the media and friends screamed loudly that breast feeding was best. If I couldn’t give my children breast milk, the least I could do was take an hour out of my weekend to stock my freezer with healthy, locally grown baby food.
Ellen Deebel has a BS in Early Childhood Education from Bucknell University and over 15 years of experience in the field, both as a teacher and administrator. She focuses her time now as a mom to her two young children, alternately packing lunches and chauferring them to various activities.
