Baby Food

For the past six weeks or so we've been feeding Lucy solid foods. Solid foods meaning pureed foods. We started with rice cereal mixed with breast milk and then slowly started adding in other foods. We bought some baby food and tried bananas first, which she did not like at all. I don't blame her because the looked and smelled gross! They were even pink which was surprising to me because bananas are not pink. I realized it was probably the preservatives that changed the color.

I did not start out planning to make her food and am not against canned food at all, but after talking to some friends who make their own baby food and my sister-in-law who is making my niece's food, I became more interested in making the food. I looked up a few websites and checked out a book from the library to read more about this process. I found that it didn't seem to be that hard to do so decided to give it a try. I started with pears and actually enjoyed making them. It really wasn't hard at all. I peeled and sliced the pears and put them in a pot with about 1/2 cup water and let them simmer for 20-30 minutes until they were pretty tender. I let them cool and then pureed them in my blender and they were ready to go. (I didn't buy the Baby Bullet. I'm sure it's great, but my Ninja blender works very well.)

The homemade food only keeps for three days in the refrigerator due to not having preservatives, so I had to freeze some of the pears. From my research I found that ice cube trays work really well for freezing. Each cube is about one ounce, making it very easy to portion out as needed. I froze the pears for about 24 hours and popped them out of the trays, just like ice cubes, when they were ready and stored them in a freezer bag. Defrosting them is an easy process, too. I simply take out the number of cubes I need and pop them in the microwave or set them out at room temperature for a few hours and they're ready to eat. So far I've made pears, green beans, peas, sweet potatoes, bananas, carrots, plums, and peaches. Lucy has liked most of what we've given her. She wasn't so much into the green beans, but we mixed them with a little sweet potato and she ate them okay. She really likes the sweet potatoes!

Today I'm going to try an avocado. I've read that babies really like this, so I hope Lucy does, too. I feel really good about feeding Lucy this fresh food and plan to continue the process until she's eating table foods...or until I get tired of making it! But really, it isn't that hard. It does take more time, but if I make a few different foods at once it's not too bad at all.