Before I ever had a baby I really really wanted a Baby Bullet Blender to make baby food. I think I was more excited about that than actually having a baby... (alright that's not true! But pretty close.) So I wanted to share with you what I have figured out when making your own baby food. I have found that all it takes is spending about 40 minutes once a week, so if you were worried about the time commitment that should ease your mind. Ok let's get started.
When to start solid foods:
At 3 months old I began adding about a tablespoon of rice grain mush to my baby's bottle. He really seemed to enjoy being more full. I did notice that it took him a lot longer to get through his bottles so I upgraded to a bottle nipple with a higher flow.
At 4 months old I started solid foods. Since my baby was already used to rice grain cereal I started with that. The whole first week he had rice cereal for his meal one time per day.
Try to introduce solid foods slowly. I chose to only introduce one new food each week to make sure my baby didn't have any allergies.
What foods to start with:
When starting solid foods you want to begin with really easy to digest vegetables. At month 4 my baby really enjoyed butternut squash, sweet potato and bananas. Around 5 months I added zucchini to his diet.
Preparing the vegetables:
I am going to show you how I prepared 2 weeks worth of sweet potato and zucchini in about an hour. You will get about 2 weeks of baby food from 1 large zucchini and 2 sweet potatoes. First, wash and peel the vegetables. Cut into small cubes and place in an oven safe dish. Add water to almost fill the dish.
Cooking the vegetables:
Preheat your oven to 350* and bake for 40 minutes. This gets the veggies all nice and soft to go through your blender. When they are done cooking, let them sit for about 15 minutes.
Puree:
When it has cooled, place place the chunks into your blender. Any kind of blender, Cuisinart,or baby blender will work great! When pureeing sweet potato add about 1/2 cup of water. Blend until the mixture has become a very soft, smooth puree,without any large chunks.
Storing:
You want to be more careful how you store your home-made baby food than store bought because it doesn't have the same preservatives. In the refrigerator it will last about 4-6 days. When you package it up to store it you want to keep that in mind. I store 6 small containers in the refrigerator and freeze the rest. This is how much food I was able to make.
