Homemade Baby Food

Now that Blake is 6 months old, he wants to eat everything in sight. There are so many opinions about when and what to feed babies, but I try not to get too caught up with all these and just try to keep it simple. My simple guidelines:

#1. Baby needs to eat

#2. Fresh foods are the best.

#3. He better like how it tastes.

I started Blake off with single grain rice cereal and then started adding in a little natural applesauce and banana for flavor. Once he was good at opening his mouth and swallowing I started trying a few new foods. I had some good coupons for baby food and picked out a few that I thought even I would like.

One of the ones I tried was Gerber Organic carrots, apples, and mangoes. Blake loved it so I decided to make my own.

I cut up 2 mangoes, 3 apples, and 6 carrots.

I steamed the fruit and veggies and pureed them in the blender. While blending I added water as needed to get a good consistency. 

There are different ways to freeze baby food. I know many people like to use ice cube trays, which works great. I happen to have found small food containers at the dollar store a long time ago that are about 2oz. I lay the containers out on a cookie sheet, fill them evenly, and freeze.

Once they are frozen, pop the food out of the containers and store in a labeled zip lock bag. One minute in the microwave, and thees are ready to eat. I add baby cereal to all the plain fruits and veggies that I feed Blake. It stretches the food and thickens it up a bit to it is not so runny.

I use this same blend and freeze method for turning leftover foods that we eat into baby food for Blake. Here is left over cheese ravioli with meat sauce and homemade macaroni and cheese. I haven't given these too Blake yet since they are a little more complex than just veggie and fruit, but he will be ready for them soon enough.

Rebecca just had to get in on this last one!

Some more food combinations that are on my to do list are apple, spinach, blueberry and banana berry - combination ideas from Gerber.