For the first 4-6 months, it was milk, milk, milk all around the clock and then suddenly here comes rice cereal, and pureed fruits and vegetables. Now its all solid foods all the time and suddenly vegetables are this foreign object that gets tossed on the floor instead for the dog to eat. Getting Emma to eat her veggies has become a game of hide and seek.
I choose to make all of Emma's pureed baby food. It was just about this time last year that we started with sweet potatoes and moved onto carrots, zucchini, butternut squash, and peas. Green beans, spinash, avocados, bananas, apples, and pears. Red potatoes, sugar snap peas, blueberries, and peaches. Not in that order.
I experimented with boiling and steaming. Got it down to a science, and now she is on to finger foods. It seems like everytime you figure something out, it is just in time for them to surprise you with moving onto something new. However, Emma is still is better at eating vegetables when they are pureed then cooked and diced up.
When she was at the peak of eating pureed foods, I was introducing new foods every three days, and every few nights I would make another batch of pureed foods to add to the freezer in ice cube trays. I am a big fan of the OXO No Spill Ice Cube Trays. I love the fact that they have a flexible lid to protect the cubes from foods that could spill in the freezer while they are freezing, and they flex very nicely to pop the cubes out when they are ready to be transferred to freezer storage bags.
This was a batch of sweet potatoes and yellow squash.
As she progressed to eating 3 and 4 ice cubes worth of food per meal I started making combinations and using 4 oz freezer safe containers or grabbing 2 cubes of this, 1 of that, and 1 of another to make a meal.
It was daunting when I first started making the food, and it turned out to be a lot of fun, concoting combinations, seeing Emma's reaction. I browsed the baby food aisle at the grocery stor for combination ideas, and scoured Pinterest for recipes. The freezer quickly filled up with lots of good food for Emma and it was amazing how much money we saved as well.
Here you see a batch of pumpking combinations including:
- pumpkin, apple, spinach
- pumpkin, banana, apple, cinnamon
- pumpkin, banana
She gobbled these up!
Some of her other favorite combinations included:
One of her favorite combinations actually inspired me ... spinach banana. After I taste tested it I warmed up to the idea of adding spinach to my breakfast smoothies and now it is a regular occurence.
Some of her other favorite combinations included:
- Carrots, peas, apples
- Spinach, peas, pears
- Sweet potato, corn, apple
- Green beans, red potato, apple
Be careful when doubling recipes. It is amazing how far one chicken breast goes when blended in with other foods, you might end up with a mountain of baby food like I did. Emma wasn't a huge fan of these, I ended up having to mix in more sweet potatoes or apples when I served these to thin out the chicken.
Through all the blending and pureeing, I made good use of my Cuisinart Rice Cooker/Steamer, Ninja Blender, and Cuisinart Food Processor. I wasn't a fan of the results with the imersion blender, generally turned into a mess and found you don't need all the special baby contraptions to make baby food. My favorite recipes and instructions came from Wholesome Baby Food and Weelicious.
I made great healthy food for Emma to eat, and gave myself some creative projects all at the same time .. and that all changed when it was time for more solid foods. I'm still working on creative solutions to get Emma to eat solid foods, sometimes a pureed veggie just hits the spot still.