Making Baby Food

From L-R: Apricot & Barley, Plums, Sweet Potatoes, Peas, Butternut Squash & Brown Rice, Cinnamon Apples & Oatmeal

So if I had all the money in the world I probably wouldn't make all of my own baby food. However, it really doesn't take much time and it saves so much money, it would be silly for me not to. As an added bonus, Leopleuradon's food is more or less preservative, sodium, and sugar free. I can also fix a more varied amount of food than I could buy. 

I know they sell those little baby food machines -- baby bullet, Beaba Baby, baby chef, etc. But I would be seriously surprised if they were actually worth buying. Mostly I use my immersion blender (my baby food best friend) and my microwave. Occasionally, I use my rice cooker if I'm doing a heck of a lot of grains at once. 

I also know that a lot of homemade baby food makers use little 1 oz ice cube trays, which I must admit look pretty organized and cute. But I use ziplock bags. The pros to this is that I don't have the additional step of transferring from the tray to another bag. And since I defrost a whole bag at a time in the fridge, if I overheat something, I can quick-chill it by throwing in some extra from the bag in the fridge. The cons: you have to be careful when you're dishing out from the bag to the bowl so you don't bobby trap yourself. (however, I largely avoid the messiest problems by cutting a corner of the bag and squeegeeing the last few tablespoons out that way). And, if you forget that you're running low and don't put a second bag in the fridge soon enough, it takes forever to defrost an entire bag in the microwave. 

I make baby food every week, which usually takes ten minutes but sometimes takes up to 30 depending on what I'm mixing up. And I try to make a months worth at a time of whatever I'm fixing. 

My Tips:

• Canned plums have pits. Do yourself a favor and remove them before you blend so you don't hurt your blender blades and then also have to fish out pit shards. 
• some sweet potatoes are super fibrous and not as good for baby food--although contrary to conventional wisdom I find that the bigger ones are actually less fibrous than the small ones. 
• Find a bulk bin for your grains....unless you're really keen on having five lbs of barley, quinoa, bulgar wheat, and whatever else on hand
• Even if you don't want to make all of your own baby food, do yourself a favor and mix up some brown rice and buy a quart of unsweetened applesauce-- all prepackaged baby food is essentially the same price regardless of the ingredients. So, you might as well make your own baby food blends by getting the premium vegetable and fruit purees and mixing it with your own cheap filler food (rice, apples, etc.)
• Maybe my baby just has really perceptive taste buds, but dinobaby  greatly prefers frozen to canned vegetables. Plus frozen is generally much lower in sodium anyway. 

Oh and organics... I'd buy organic applesauce if 1--they sold it in something larger than single-serve cups here (we used to get organic applesauce by the almost half gallon out west) 2--it wasn't stupidly expensive (the half gallon was also only a couple quarters more expensive than the conventional jars). Apples just have a much larger amount of pesticide/fungicide on them than other produce. Other than that I  wouldn't sweat it. Ironically, grains (which have some of the lowest amount of pesticides in them anyway) are the only thing I do buy organic because granola-people love their bulk bins and weird cereals ;)