Homemade Baby Food

We waited until three days before Miss F turned 6 months to feed her solids.  We wanted to wait until exactly 6 months, but Christmas day seemed like a much more appropriate day to give her a new experience. 

From that day on, I've made every bit of her baby food.  *B* gave me an immersion blender for my birthday in November, and that made all the difference.  Since that first meal, I've decided that it's my goal for all of Felicity's food to be homemade for her first year.  It's been interesting trying to stick to that goal. 

My workout group hands out plum organic pouches pretty regularly.  When I first said no thanks, the teacher looked at me like I was crazy.  Yes, I know it's "just apples".  But I like having control over what kind of  apples, where they come from, and what bits of the apple I leave out.  For a while, I peeled the apples first.  Now I leave the skins on.  And I've always been picky about cutting out every bit of the seed pods.  As for the pouches, I have no idea what the story is other than it's filled with organic apples.  And I certainly don't know what's in the packaging.

And besides, when we make our own food we get to be much more creative with our meals!

This is Miss F chowing down on cauliflower, carrot, and barley curry when she was 8 months old.  How many 8 month olds eat that?  Some of her absolute favorite foods are sweet potatoes with cinnamon and nutmeg, and parsnips with pears.  Yesterday, she had fennel and pears with green beans.

I have two baby food books, but after the first month, I never used them anymore.  I know what I'm doing!  All you have to do is cook it (steam, sautee, bake, etc).  Puree or mash it to the texture you like, and spoon it into ice cube trays.  I freeze up the trays and pop the food back into ziplocs.  When she's ready to eat, I throw in 8 or so cubes of whatever sounds good together into a bowl, microwave it, and hand her the bowl to feed herself.  To make baby food, it takes no more than half an hour.  I make up a huge batch of a bunch of foods and fill my freezer once every month or so.

But, I was recently thinking about those pouches and wondering if we're missing out on having baby food in pouches.  Is it really easier to feed her?  So I found this post on Thankfully Thrifty where she makes applesauce squeeze pouches.  I made mine with pears: 

 

They were pretty good, but not right for Miss F yet.   I could imagine that they'd be great when she's older and capable of holding it herself.  It was nearly impossible to spoon up for her when we were out the other day, though.  

Our favorite on-the-go baby food?  A whole banana.  I mash the banana carefully through the skin before peeling it.  Then, I pull the peel back about two inches and pull the mashed banana out with a spoon.  It works perfectly, and you don't have tupperware containers full of food bits floating around in your diaper bag.

Though I know I'm being optimistic, I'm really hoping that *B* and I will only be eating good, wholesome foods by the time Miss F is eating table food exclusively so that she never knows what she's missing.