Homemade Baby Food

Those little jars of baby food are awfully convenient, but may not give you the biggest bang for your buck-- monetarily or nutritionally speaking. Jarred baby food is MUCH more expensive per ounce than fresh food or food prepared for adult consumption. And while it is nice to have the pre-sized portions of well-blended baby meals, it can unnecessarily increase your grocery bill. Furthermore, jarred baby food loses nutrients as it has to be cooked at high temperatures to kill off any possible bacteria.
Making homemade organic baby food is easy, not too time consuming, and will save you some much needed cash, especially in these economic times..... When I was making baby food (now my guy is big enough to eat whatever we are eating!), I would devote a couple of hours once every other week and make large batches of baby food that I froze. I read the book Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron. It was well worth the read and gave me some great tips on making your own baby food, as well as when and how to introduce new foods. I will share some of her tips with you here!
The easiest way to make baby food is, as I have already said, in large batches. When you go to the grocery store, buy a couple of weeks worth of a few different organic fruits and veggies. I always looked for what was on sale, which would sometimes determine what my little guy was going to eat for the next couple of weeks. If you buy large amounts of on-sale produce, you can make your own organic food for pretty cheap. Once you are ready to process the food, you will need ice cube trays and freezer bags, as well as something to mash the food with (a fork can work fine, but a baby food mill can help get the food even smoother-- some babies really prefer a smooth texture!).
I preferred do cook all of the food at once, and be really busy in the kitchen but get it over with. Cook, steam, or boil each of your fruits/veggies. You want to cook them enough so that they are soft and cooked through, but the more you overcook, the more nutrients will be lost. So, cook only until they are done. After each food is cook, mash well until you get the texture you want. Make sure to remove seeds and skins, particularly for the very young ones! As soon as you are done mashing, fill your ice cube trays with the mashed food, cover well with tin foil, and put into the freezer immediately. Freezing right away will keep more nutrients and prevent bacteria from growing on the food. If you time this right, you can be putting one veggie into the freezer just as the next is ready to be mashed.
After your food is frozen (a couple of hours) crack the veggie cubes into a freezer bag and make sure to get ALL of the air out. Then, double bag into another freezer bag. Trust me; if you don't get all of the air out and double bag it, you will get freezer burn. It is worth the extra minute or two! Also, don't forget your cubes in the trays overnight. The longer they sit there after freezing, the better chance of them accumulating some freezer burn!
Now, label your bags with what is in there and the date you froze it on, and now you have baby food all ready to go. When baby is hungry, just throw a couple of cubes into a saucepan and heat on low, making sure to stir frequently in order to heat evenly (as it is easy to get VERY hot parts in with still frozen parts). Before feeding to your little one, make sure that there are NO frozen or hot parts. You could probably use a microwave as well, but we are microwave-free at our house, so I am not sure how long it would heat up for.
Freezing the food will cause it to lose some nutrients; making your babe fresh food each meal would be ideal, however, none of us busy moms have time to do that. Plus you would end up wasting quite a bit of food. Freezing will preserve more nutrients than jarring, and will save you much needed time and sanity.
Now you know exactly what you are putting into your baby's tummy and you know exactly how that food was handled. If you buy food that is in-season, you can buy your produce locally and even know exactly where it was grown! You will be saving money, providing more nutritious food for your babe, and you will be reducing your environmental impact! You will no longer have multiple glass jars every day that need to be recycled after only 1 use! Plus, you will be avoiding all of the fossil fuels used to transport produce to the factory where the baby food is made, and then transport the finished product to stores. I am not saying that jarred baby food is evil- it is great for traveling, for babysitters, and for those days when you just can't muster the courage to face the kitchen after a day from hell. But, if you rely on homemade food for the majority of your little ones' meals, you will find that it is not that much extra work, and well worth the extra nutrition and extra savings!