Making Baby Food - part 3 - Actual Food!

And now, the piece de resistance -- the edible food part of this whole process :) My go to guide for making food has been www.wholesomebabyfood.com. There really are some great ideas and information on this site. There are also a ton of books on the topic with recipes and suggestions and such. I personally have one called "Mommy Made." It was given to me by a friend and has recipes from first foods all the way to toddler friendly meals that the whole family can enjoy. Regardless of your resource, you will need to check with your pediatrician for a food schedule. I know different resources suggest different schedules for introducing new foods. Liam is on an even slower schedule because of his history of GI problems and food allergies. Just double check to make sure that you aren't introducing something that will give your little one a belly ache or cause further digestive issues such as food allergies.


Here is the cooking gear I use/have used:

Steamer







It has been said that steaming food is the best way to cook food while maintaining the highest nutritional value. Steamers are definitely great to use, but not absolutely necessary. If you don't have a steamer or know you probably won't use one for anything but baby food, I wouldn't buy one of those big steamer/rice cooker combos. Maybe opt for a bamboo or metal steamer or choose a different method. One of the benefits of baby food making is the money you save. If you buy every gadget or piece of equipment you come across, you will end up spending more than you save. There are many more ways to prepare baby food using kitchen tools you already have.


Pot for boiling



I have definitely used these, especially when preparing frozen fruits and vegetables. Definitely a perfectly fine option for cooking all of your food.


Pan for baking



I use glass pans for baking fruit. You already have them anyway, so why not use them!


Strainer




A must have to get the fine texture necessary for more fibrous foods.



I ran across this super cool set with a stand and a pestle which would be awesome if I had the $100 to drop on it. If you already have one of these or are a trust fund baby, use away, my friend, use away...


Fit



It is very important to make sure your fruit and veggies are nice and clean and free of pesticides, herbicides, waxes, and other contaminants that may be on the outside of your produce. Fit is 100% natural and gets the job done. I already had this because I use it on the produce my husband and I eat anyway.





Now that that's over, I'll share with you some of what I've been up to. I always buy organic produce for Liam. Always, always, always. I just want him to have the simplest food possible, so I choose the ones with the least pesticides, herbicides, genetically modified ingredients, nitrates, etc... It's just a personal preference, not a prerequisite. I just figure if I'm going to go through the trouble of making his food to ensure it's purity, I don't want to negate that effort with other contaminants. Here are the foods that I did with Liam:

Peas
Carrots
Sweet Potatoes
Green Beans
Winter Squash
Summer Squash/Yellow Zuchini
Green Zuchini
Spinach
Pears
Peaches
Plums
Apples
Bananas
Apricots
Mango
Avocado
Prunes (never made these because of the rehydration involved - always bought the prepared variety)

Bananas and Avocados are the easiest of all to prepare. You just peel and mash or puree. You can add water if you need them to be smoother, but chances are you shouldn't.

The rest need to be cooked in some way to be soft enough to further prepare. We'll start with the fruit. You need to do your best to buy the ripest fruit you can find. Unripened fruit is typically more tart and less palatable for a baby, especially more acidic fruits like peaches and plums. It is often hard to get really ripe fruit because of the modern grocery store set-up, so I choose to bake my fruit to enhance the flavor and sweetness. I also read somewhere that baking preserves more of the nutrients than boiling because they don't leech into the water as much. I'm not a scientist, so I have no idea if that's true, but I figured I'd go with it. I start by preheating the oven to whatever I feel like, usually around 350ish. Then I get a glass baking pan (either 9x13 rectangular or 8x8 square depending on how much fruit I'm making) and fill it with an inch or two of water. I use glass pans because I feel like it is cleaner and with non-stick pans I wonder if the non-stick is leeching into the food. (I'm certain I saw a dateline or 20/20 about that somewhere...) I then clean the outside of each piece of fruit with my trusty bottle of Fit and cut them all in half. I then core/pit/seed each piece of fruit and slice an X in the skin of each half. (This makes it easier to peel once the fruit has been cooked.) Each half is placed flesh side down in the water and baked until tender. Then I remove the fruit and place it on a plate to cool before peeling and pureeing. I do not peel the fruit before I bake it for a couple of reasons. You want the fruit really tender so it will be easy to puree. If you bake "skinless" fruit in a pan of water it has the tendency to begin to disintegrate into the water while baking. Also when the flesh is exposed to the dry heat of the oven it gets tough on the outside. Then instead of being able to use all the flesh, you have to remove the tough part. That could be a whole serving of fruit you are getting rid of! As you are pureeing, you may notice that you need a smoother consistency. I just use the same water that I cooked the fruit in to thin it out. This water contains any of the nutrients that have escaped the food, so it's a great way to add it back in while receiving the texture result you are looking for.

Now we have veggies. Veggies are very good for baby, but a little harder to prepare because they are usually much more fibrous than the fruits. When preparing veggies, you often need a strainer. It is essential to have one for peas and green beans. Both of these have hulls and or strings that babies can choke on. Other foods that I have found may need one are winter squash and sweet potatoes. They sometimes have a stringy quality that is not acceptable for baby food. With the exception of sweet potatoes, green beans and peas, I peel, seed, dice and either steam or boil my veggies. My mother-in-law was sweet enough to give me a steamer, but I know that not everyone has one. Boiling is perfectly acceptable. I also steam or boil the peas and green beans, but obviously they don't need peeling, seeding or dicing. I mean, you can peel your peas if you want to, but I'm not :) When it comes to the sweet potatoes, I scrub the skins really well and then bake them. It is so much easier to turn the oven on 400 and throw a potato in the oven then going through the trouble of peeling and dicing and such. A sweet potato will take about an hour or so to get really soft in the oven, depending on size. Then all you have to do is scoop out the pulp, add water if desired, and strain if it needs it. You don't even need a pureeing device for this one! After pureeing and adding the appropriate amount of reserve water to any of the other vegetables, make the judgement call and see if you need to strain. With the exception of peas and green beans, this all depends on the produce itself and your babies development. Please, please, please don't pass up the strainer because it is more work. It is not worth making the food yourself if your baby chokes on it :)



Time Savers!

So, all this is fine and dandy if you have the time. If you are a mom, chances are you are strapped for time. I know I am. So, I often use short cuts.

Frozen Produce



This is probably my most used short cut. You can buy pretty much any organic produce peeled, deseeded/decored, cut up and frozen. My fave is spinach. I honestly do not prepare spinach unless it is frozen. It's too much work. The downside is that often times the selection is more limited.

Canned Produce



This is a little bit trickier considering all the stuff they usually add to canned foods, most notably MSG, sodium, and sugar. These are no-no's for little tykes. The only canned products I have used have been organic canned fruit in organic pear juice. Other than the fruit and juice, I think there is only ascorbic acid (aka Vitamin C) added for something...I don't know what. As long as you read the labels and are okay with what's in there, go for it. I promise I won't come and get you :)

Jarred Foods



Let's have a little heart to heart here. Lately, this is what I use most. Oh goodness...the cat is out of the bag! I started Liam on cereal at 4 1/2 months because of his reflux, so he was ready for more options right after he turned 5 months old. I always started each food with the jarred variety just to make sure he could tolerate before I made a load of homemade. Once it was a go I whipped up batch after batch after batch... This was until I was at home alone with Liam for three weeks straight. Up until then I had been staying with my parents, so time was a little easier to find. Once I got home...not so much... I spent the first few days making a ton of food to stock up and hold me over until Jon got home. Boy was I a frazzled mess! I used the homemade until each type started running out. I hadn't made enough to last me the entire 3 weeks, so slowly more and more jars entered our cabinet. I personally decided that spending quality time with my son was more important. At that point it had become a "one or the other" situation. I needed to simplify. So I did my research and settled on Earth's Best organic. It was the best option quality and cost wise for us. There are many brands of frozen fresh baby foods that may be a good option for you if you aren't pinching pennies like we are. Basically these companies make the food like you would at home and just package and freeze it for you to buy. If you can get these, do. You can usually find them at specialty or health food stores like Whole Foods. Unfortunately this was not an option for us, so Earth's Best was the way to go. Whole Foods and Babies R Us have the best variety, but Target is definitely cheaper. I try to buy as much as I can at Target and then get the other flavors from Babies R Us since they are often running sales making their prices better than Whole Foods. There are a couple of compromises I had to make here in terms of ingredients. Any jarred food with bananas has citric acid and ascorbic acid to keep it from oxidizing. Some of their mixed vegetable varieties have potatoes and/or corn in them which tend to have less nutritional than caloric value. Some of their fruit varieties have berries in them which can be allergens. So, I just waited a little longer on these options until I felt comfortable feeding them to my son. Liam is almost 8 months old and I literally started the berry varieties a week ago just to be careful. I have also bought "adult versions" of organic applesauce, pear sauce, etc... as it is cheaper per unit than buying the individual baby food jars which pretty much contain the exact same thing. With that being said, I love jarred food!


Finger Foods

I only exclusively used jarred food for a couple of weeks. Then he started finger foods, so I have been slowly working into that. Liam is now well on his way to being solely a finger food baby. I have stopped making the purees altogether because he is growing out of them and am replacing those with homemade finger foods. These are prepared the same way minus the pureeing. I'm just going to hold off on the peas and green beans until he has more teeth and can chew up those skins really well. I like making finger food a lot more because you get to cut out the mess and hassle that comes with pureeing, which I think is really the hardest part about making baby food. Aside from bananas and avocados, I'm still cooking the fruits and veggies, so check with your pediatrician on when you can start raw foods. I also am waiting until after Liam's 9 month appointment to introduce meats. Again, check with your pediatrician.


Well, that's the long and sh...long of making baby food! I really suggest you at least try it out. It is much cheaper than purchasing prepared foods and can be a lot less wasteful. As long as you think through everything, take suggestions from friends who have done it, and make sure you have everything you need, I think it is very doable. Good luck and happy pureeing!