Making your own baby food

I did not decide on making my own baby food from the start. In fact, when Josiah was around 3-4 months, I told my baby sitter I’ll pay her extra so she can shop and cook for him, I even ask my sis-in-law to teach me how to cook. I recently had to apply for food stamps in texas to be able to get groceries for our family. So ya, basically, I have zero knowledge in how to prepare baby food, plus quite overwhelmed with the amount of time involved. I thought I already spend so much time making his milk, what more now need to cook!

However, after doing some extensive reading and research, and reading blogs of mamas who cook, I decided to go for it. So I bought those baby cubes from Tiny Tapir, even though my friend said you can use any kind of air tight freezable containers. Well, being kiasu and kiasi of BPA, I bought the containers made specifically for baby food, that is after some extensive reading too, as I even considered Tupperware’s ice cube tray, freezer bags, Avent’s baby food cup etc. but settled for this.

My first time making the baby food was quite disastrous. I had downloaded all the recipes from wholesomebabyfood.com, printed them and had them by my side. The first foods I attempted were sweet potato, carrots, avocado and pumpkin. I wanted to do it all in one night, which proved to be a wrong step. I had my sweet potatos baking in the oven, the carrots boiling in the pot, the pumpkin deseeded to be baked after the potatoes, and then I took out the avocado to find it too raw and impossible to scrap out the meet. I still went ahead to puree it as I had never eaten avocado before, so I had really no idea how it should look when raw. Needless to say, I later had to throw away the whole pureed avocado.

Then while potato was baking halfway, baby called. When I was back down, I found that I left the plastic sieve in the pot of boiling carrots and it had melted through and stuck to the pot. There was even a small file that caught on it!

Well, after learning my lesson from the first trial, the rest of the times preparing baby food was pretty much a breeze. I learned that I should do one food at a time in one night. After I got the hang of it, now I can make many combinations of food in one hour.

So where do I start now? I buy ripe avocados or if not let it ripen on the counter top instead of putting in the fridge. I try not to buy too many different kinds of fruit and vege without planning. So normally I have to write a list of things that I need for combination foods and buy only those, although I can keep those that can last longer, like apples for one. I steam, bake or microwave the vege, and used to cook the fruits too, except for avocado and banana. But now that Josiah is nearing 8 months, I don’t cook the fruits anymore as he can handle it well. I prefer to bake my pumpkin, facedown on a stone plate with an inch of water in the oven until soft.

Frozen foods thaw easily from the baby cube, just let it sit in very hot water. Two changes of water and it’s totally thawed at room temperature. Now that I can combine any fruit/vege types that he has tried, I alternate foods that cause constipation with foods that cure constipation. For eg. if he eats banana in the morning, at noon he will eat pears.

For cereals I alternate Josiah between three kinds so far, brown rice, rolled oats and barley. I use the food processor to blend it to fine powder form before keeping it in the fridge for later use. Oatmeal is the easiest to cook, while rice and barley cereals take a long time to cook over the stove. Preferably I use organic brown rice and organic pearl barley. So I keep 3 containers of these at home and another 3 at the baby sitter’s place.

At 7 months and 3 weeks, Josiah is starting to eat 3 meals a day. When he wakes up early in the morning, it’s just milk for early brekkie. Then after his bath before the first nap, he will take his breakfast of cereal with fruit/vege. Then it’s nap time. At noon time he takes his second solid meal, and milk before or after. He will just take fruit/vege without cereal for dinner around 5pm. Then before bed, it’s just milk. Thank God for a good eater, he usually finishes eating his 2-3 oz of solid food within 15 min.

Ok so doing all of these can be a bit overwhelming and takes up all your resting time. Like tonight, after making everything, plus baking some stuffs etc, I only could sit down in my sofa at 10.30pm. So thank God for a helpful husband who sometimes, helped me out when I could use some hands.

So what’s my baby’s fav food so far? I believe it’s like mine, MANGO!