Feeding My Little Bear

A mama bear must feed her baby bear. And with that comes this realization: I have a new favorite thing.

Making baby food! I explored the idea of making my own baby food while I was pregnant but didn't give it too much thought when I was in the "newborn survival mode" and then the "working mom survival mode." But once Lawson hit six months and was ready to eat solid food beyond rice cereal (which he never liked anyway), I began researching making baby food again. We gave him Earth's Best Organic jarred baby food for a couple of weeks at first to see what he liked. I didn't want to make batches of one type of food if he ended up hating it. Fortunately, this kid will eat anything. So we had out first adventure in baby food making in the beginning of June once school was out and I had some time on my hands. Turns out that it isn't that hard. In fact, it's easy, and for me, incredibly addicting. We bought a cheap food processor (cheap as in it has one speed but works just fine), a bunch of produce, some ice cube trays, and some freezer bags. I got Justin on board with the idea (his favorite perk of making baby food is that we save money buying produce vs. buying jarred food) and we baked, steamed, pureed, froze, and stored. Easy! I decided I would try the method of freezing the purees in ice cube trays and it has worked very well. Each cube is about an ounce so we can grab two or three ounces as needed. 

In the past six weeks we've only made baby food on three occasions since we can make so much at one time. The first time we made pears, peaches, butternut squash, peas, and sweet potatoes. I also made carrots toward the middle of June and green beans and mango about a week ago.

I mainly use the website www.wholesomebabyfood.com as a resource. There are tons of baby food recipe books out there but I don't have any. I basically look to see what type of foods are appropriate for the age Lawson is at the time and then puree them accordingly. The first batches of food I made were very smooth purees but the ones I made today were a little thicker and chunkier.

Lately I'm having a lot of fun mixing different fruits and vegetables as Lawson is ready for combinations. He is also eating cinnamon in his fruit and oatmeal on occasion and loves it. I have yet to find a food that he doesn't like. I tried giving him avocado the other night and he wasn't a big fan, but I'm convinced that was a texture thing instead of taste thing since he is used to having smooth purees. I'm trying to introduce chunkier food every now and then so he can start to practice chewing (with his gums...no teeth yet!). Today I made peaches, pears, apples, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, and froze some banana slices. I didn't realize that you can freeze banana slices until I read about it today. Bananas are easy since you don't have to puree them but obviously they go bad. So I sliced up five bananas and froze them so I can use as many slices as I need and not let the bananas go bad. After I make green beans and peas in the next couple of days we will have enough food in the freezer for about six weeks.

Wow, I just read through this post and realized that I sound like some kind of pro-baby-food-making commercial. I promise I'm not trying to sound that lame. It's fun for me to make Lawson's food and very satisfying when he likes it. See?

He is still getting all of his calories from breastmilk (still nursing like a champ five times a day!) since baby food mainly provides different flavor and texture experiences for him right now. And the biggest bonus about solid food--jarred or homemade? Solid poop! No more blowouts! Now that's a reason to celebrate!