Soon after Hank turned 4 months old, I started him on rice cereal. (I blogged about this a few weeks ago.) He seemed to like it and tolerate it well. So last week, after a few weeks of only cereal and learning to eat from a spoon, we started Hank on baby food. Before I made the transition, I found out about a series of classes at Central Baptist called "First Spoonfuls" that teaches you about adding solid food to your baby's diet. One of my friends, who is a registered dietician, teaches the class. I knew that we would see demonstrations of how to make your own baby food, but I thought that there was NO WAY that I was going to do that. I'm not that domestic. I mean, I don't like to cook for myself, much less go to the extra work of making my own baby food! But once I got to the class, the instructor made it look so easy that I figured I should "give it a go." And so far, it has been pretty easy, but I have started out very simple. The first food that I gave Hank was bananas because all I had to do was mash a banana up with a fork and add breast milk. Since then I have made apples, pears, carrots, and mangoes. The apples, pears, and carrots took a little more effort because I had to peel, chop, and cook them prior to putting them through the food processor. I got some little containers from Babies R' Us and some ice cube trays from the grocery so that I can freeze and store my homemade baby food. I haven't spent a whole lot of money so far on storage since I'm not sure how long this phase of making my own baby food will last. But it does make me feel good that I know exactly what Hank is eating and that it doesn't have any preservatives in it. Frozen, homemade baby food can stay in the freezer for up to 3 months.
I also got a book from Barnes and Noble called "Top 100 Baby Purees" by Annabel Karmel. It has some good ideas and recipes in it. I never thought about adding ingredients like cinnamon, parsley, onion, or garlic to baby food, but I bet that it makes it taste a lot better. In fact, some of the recipes sound so good, I think that I might even eat them myself! The other night, Russ was going to make us some mango smoothies. I told him to let me look in my baby food puree book and see what tastes good mixed with mango. The book suggested that strawberries combined well with mango so Russ added some strawberries in the blender with the mango. And let me tell you, a mango/strawberry smoothie is delicious! So if this homemade baby food thing doesn't work out, at least I got a good smoothie recipe out of it!
By the way, if you live in the Lexington area and are interested in taking the classes at Central Baptist, here is the link to the website:
The classes are free! You can't beat that deal!
And here are some pictures of the foods that I have made so far along with a picture of the book that I bought:
4 comments:
I love the bucking bronco pics! His little face is so excited! We can't wait to finally get to squeeze on him next month!
I love your cute containers! I fed Rad all jarred baby food, but Ace had about 90% homemade baby foods. I thought it was fun to make, and I'd make big batches to cut down on prep days. I just froze mine in ice cube trays and stored the cubes in Ziploc freezer bags. That worked pretty well.
Looks yummy! Glad you enjoyed the class!
Looks yummy! Glad you enjoyed the class!
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