DIY your own baby food

Have you ever thought about making your own baby food?  I (briefly) thought about it with my first 2 children and now with our 3rd baby I wonder what I was so afraid of!  I have to give credit to my Vitamix blender.  Chances are that if I hadn’t gotten this for my birthday this year that I would still be purchasing my baby food instead of making it. I got a Vitamix blender about the same time that Matthew was ready to start eating baby food.  My mixer has a fancy “puree” setting and I thought I’d give it a try.  It turns out that making baby food couldn’t have been any easier. Matthew is now 10 months old and is transitioning to table food.  Nearly all of his baby food has been made in my Vitamix blender. In the early days of baby food you want just one type of food and you want it pureed smooth.  If you would normally cook the food then you should cook the food before pureeing.  For example, I’d steam peas, carrots, bake sweet potato, butternut squash, and I’d cook apples and pears on the stovetop.  Things like strawberries, blueberries (things that you eat uncooked worked fine just pureed) don’t need any cooking.

Baby food ready to puree

Here are my quick tips on making baby food that your little one will love!

Stage 1 baby food (one type of food)

• Prep your fruit or vegetable by cleaning and cooking if necessary
  

  Baby food prep

• Single type of food in blender and puree until smooth
• Pour into individual containers for freezing or eating.  Keep enough out for 1-2 days and freeze the rest.
• When ready to eat the frozen food defrost in the refrigerator or on the counter.
• You will find lots of storage examples on the internet but I stuck with simple plastic disposable containers.  These are my favorite and we use them for LOTS of things in our house.  I already had these containers in my house and when I started making the food I debated how to store the prepared food.  I decided to give these a try and then purchase something later if this didn’t work.  Well, Matthew is 10 months old and we are using these containers so they have worked great for us!
  

  Baby food storage

Stage 2 baby food (2 types of food, still pureed)

• Stage 2 baby food simply takes 2 or more of the stage 1 baby food and combines them together!
• This is where you can get creative and mix a variety of things together.  A good way to get ideas is to take a trip to your grocery store and see what the ready made baby food is combining together.
• I found that apples and pears really added well to lots of things and Matthew loved it because it made things sweet.
• Matthew is a big eater and for most of this baby food I added in a filler–rice, oatmeal, mixed grains.  This not only helped in filling up Matthew it made the food thicker and was much easier to spoon feed!

Stage 3 baby food (chunky baby food)

• This is the stage that we are in today!  We are in the process of transitioning Matthew from baby food to table food.
• This stage of baby food had been a little harder for me.  I want Matthew to eat what we are eating but prepping baby food everyday is not something that I’m in the habit of doing.
• I have 2 basic ways of making food in this stage.

1. Use the stage 2 baby food and add additional items that are not pureed.  Put everything in the blender and pulse until the food is the consistency that your baby can handle
2. Take whatever you are fixing for dinner and pulse in the blender until desired consistency…this has worked well for spaghetti and meatballs!

That’s about it for now!  I hope that you try making your own food.  Add a comment for any questions you have and I’ll do my best to help out.

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