I am looking for recipes to make baby food for my daughter. I would like to try making my own baby food to save money and to have more control over what she is eating in her foods.
My daughter has been eating jarred baby food since she was 6 months old. She is currently eat Stage 1, Stage 2, and Stage 3 Foods.
Please Let me know if you have a suggestion for where I can find recipes to make the food.
Edited to add: I plan on using our Magic Bullet Blender to make it. :-)
Go and get "First Meals" by Annabel Karmel. It is an awesome cookbook for making your own baby food, and also has recipes for toddlers and older kids too. It was my baby food bible for my kids....
Hi Marla
First of all, the idea of making your own food is really great.
My husband and I made both of our kids babyfood because I didn't like all the perservatives and salt that they put in it. Plus it was too expensive.
Anyway, we had bought a babyfood blender (got it at Babies R Us about 5 years ago).
We devoted a whole day on Saturday to make food for the coming weeks.
We would buy fresh fruits and vegatables (sometimes we would buy the frozen kind) and steam them until they were soft.
Note: The softer fruit and vegatables like strawberries, blue berry, bananas, peas and green beans, you can just throw them into the blender. The more denser food (also fill the blender half way) like potatoes, carrots, etc.. you may need to add water, milk, breastmilk or formula to thin it out a little.
Once you blend the food, we filled up ice cube trays and let them freeze. Once they were frozen, we would place the frozen food in a gallon size ziplock bag and labled it.
Each cube was equivalent to a half jar of baby food (smaller jar). We put about 3 days worth of food in the refriderator (spell??) to let them thaw on their own. Sometimes we had to use the microwave.
Just a reminder is try out 1 food per week to rule out allergies.
Good luck, we had a lot of fun doing this. In the long run, the advantage of making your own food, is kids will more likely to love vegatables and fruit later on. I know mine do.
Hi Marla,
We make our own baby food, and it's not so complicated that you need a book or recipes. All you need is a blender, and an old-fashioned potato masher.
We buy organic canned fruits and vegetables, and puree them in the blender. Just dump the can, juice/water* and all, in the blender and puree for about 30 seconds. Stir everything up, and puree again until you like the consistency. You can pour the pureed food back in the original can, put tinfoil over it, and keep it in the fridge for a few days.
[*Note: You may have to experiment on how much of the juice/water to add to the blender. We've found that for peaches and pears, they need only a little juice, otherwise they turn out runny.]
My son is only 8 months and he doesn't have any teeth yet, so he's eating pureed fruits and veggies, and oatmeal. We just started him on scrambled eggs, which I mashed with a fork.
When your daughter gets to where she can eat hotdishes or soups or chunks of meat, you can either mash those with a potato masher, or put them in the blender on "chop" mode.
Remember, babies have been eating table food way before commercial baby food and fancy baby food mills were invented!
There is a wonderful site that will tell you everything you need to know... www.wholesomebabyfood.com
I have made all of my 16 month olds food and the few times I tried to give him jarred food he wanted nothing of it :)
Have fun!
N.
Maria,
I really liked the book "Super Baby Foods" by Ruth Yaron. It has a TON of info in it (some of which I never really used - like making my own baby cereals). But, there was lots of recipes, a list of vegi's and fruits to introduce each month, and other fun crafts in the book as well.
J.
