Babyfood tutorial

last time when i blogged about making peanut's baby food, i had a lot of feedback. some of you were interested in the how-to since you are pregnant or have little ones yourself. well, for that reason tonight while on a baby food making marathon i made sure to photograph each step. i myself am a visual learner so i thought photos might help someone out there. keep in mind that i made 4 different ''flavors'' and start to finish took 2 hours (including cleaning, peeling, dicing, steaming/mashing, and clean up). to me, that's not bad. i wait til the kids are in bed, put on my ipod, and jam out.

since peanut is *gasp* almost 8 months old, we are now combining foods. tonight i made plums & apples, peaches w/apple & banana, butternut squash w/pears and blueberries w/ pears. personally i usually add a familiar fruit (apples/pears are his fav) to a new food (in this case plums and blueberries) so he's more apt to enjoy it.

first up, plums with apple using the steamer. now normally i make enough of something to freeze and have multiple servings. but as i was going through our fruit, there was a plum that was starting to get soft so i wanted to use it before it had to be tossed.

step 1: rinse your fruit and peel it. then dice into small pieces and set in steamer basket.
step 2: once soft, remove fruit to either a food processor, blender or in this case a mini-chopper. (since i was making so little, i went with the mini chopper)
Step 3: blend until you reach the desired consistency. if you want it thinner/runnier add some of the leftover water that the fruit was steamed in (it's chalked full of nutrients). for thicker consistency, add little to no water and don't puree for as long.
okay, so that made 2 good size servings. in all honesty it probably could have been split into 3 servings but i wanted to conserve my little containers.

then i did peaches with apples and bananas using the steamer, mashing by hand and the blender.

Step 1: peel, clean and dice your peaches and apples. cut them up and place in steamer.
step 2: while the peaches and apples are steaming, mash a banana (or 2 in this case) by hand. cut each one into chunks, then mash with a fork. if you need to soften the banana some, you can pop them in the microwave for 20 seconds. then mash.
step 3: add your apples, peaches and bananas to the blender.
step 4: blend. i usually use the pulse button so that it doesn't puree too much. this is when i sneak a taste...i sneak a taste of everything i make him. surprisingly this flavor is really good, even though it's nothing i would normally eat all together.
step 5: scoop out into ice cube trays, then freeze. once frozen solid, pop them out and put them in a ziploc baggie. you can thaw them in the microwave, or just set them out an hour before you plan on feeding the kiddo.
for this batch i used 2 small bananas, 2 organic peaches and 1 apple. it made 16 cubes, and peanut eats 2 cubes at a time. so for less than $2 we have 8 servings of fresh, healthy, preservative-free baby food. one jar of a stage 2 "earth's best" baby food is $.70/jar. hmm....less than $2 or $5.60? that's a hard choice. not!

now for the butternut squash with pears, i chose to buy frozen organic butternut squash for 2 reasons. 1) being we live in kansas, squash isn't really plentiful in july and 2) this is easier, just as healthy and was on sale for $1.89 for 10oz.
step 2: steam the butternut squash for about 3 minutes, then add the pears. steam for another minute or two, just until soft. it really doesn't take but 5 minutes because pears are pretty soft already.
step 3: drop in blender and puree. easy-peasy and you're done.

lastly, i whipped up the blueberries. they were $2 for 1/2 a pint and i used the entire container.

step 1: start about 5 cups of water boiling in a saucepan. (no steamer) while that's going, rinse and clean your blueberries. make sure you remove all the stems and yucky bits.
step 2: drop the blueberries into the boiling water and decrease the heat. let the berries simmer until they soften. for me, this took about 7 minutes. using a slotted spoon, move berries to the blender. then puree with cut and diced pears. (in this case, i didn't steam the pears first...the berries were hot enough to blend up nicely with the pears) see how purple real, fresh blueberries are? doesn't quite compare to the jarred blueberries now does it?
tonight or tomorrow i'll make veggies. he'll be having white potatoes with broccoli, peas and carrots, and green beans. for more ideas, check out wholesomebabyfood.com. it's an awesome site!