Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Adventures in Baby Food

Madeline is starting solids.  This time around I decided to make my own organic baby food for a couple reasons.  
1. $$$  Baby food is pretty pricey!  Especially if you go the organic route.  One teensy 2 oz. jar carrots, peas, bananas, etc. can set you back $.60 a jar.  I bought all baby food for Emily and spent about $10-15 a week once she started eating three meals a day. 

2.  Another reason is I have the time. At first I was pretty overwhelmed at the thought of making this baby food.  I figured it would take me all day to cut, peel, cook and freeze the baby food. Boy was I wrong! The reality is, it takes me about an hour or two depending on how much I plan on making and freezing.  I found a great baby food Blog that gave me many useful hints.  I got the confidence I needed and I was on my way to making baby food!

It is really simple.  I Peel, chop and steam/boil/bake whatever food I prefer.  Then I puree it in the food processor, thinning it out with water and scoop the food into ice trays for freezing.  Once frozen, I popped out the food cubes and put them in a marked ziploc freezer bag.  Now I just have to go into the freezer and pull out what I need.

This is what peas should look like!  I bought a bag of frozen organic peas for $1.99 and steamed them right in the bag.  Threw them into the food processor and voila!  On that one bag, I filled 1.5 trays of food.

Yams ready for the freezer!  I bought a 5 lb. bag of organic yams for $5 ($1 a yam basically).  I ended up filling four trays of Yams.



I started her on plain whole grain rice cereal two weeks ago. I really like Earth's Best products.  The cereal is not that much more than Gerber. I also really liked the variety of the 2nd foods when I was feeding Emily a couple years ago.  I prefer to not use Gerber at all.  Not even organic. According to blogs and news articles I have read, Gerber uses a lot of fillers in their baby food such as large amounts of water, chemically modified starch and added sugar.  No thanks. Earth's Best and Beech Nut do not use these fillers.

 Last week she started Yams, peas and apple sauce.  She liked the yams and apple sauce.  No to the peas.  As soon as I scooped them into her little mouth, she started crying and spit them out.  I did mix them with yams and she tolerated them.  

This week I made carrots and peaches.  We will see how she likes those!

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Cookies!

We decided to do something fun with Emily last week so we made Toll House cookies from scratch!  There is nothing better than a homemade cookie.  Well maybe the Wegmans Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies OHMYGAWD they are so good!  They almost melt in your mouth as you chew.  Anyways!


I remember as a kid making them with my mother and had so much fun stirring everything up and then watching the balls of cookie dough "melt" and turn into cookies in the oven.




Emily loves to help me do pretty much everything and I must say she is a great little helper! She really had a blast helping me to pour the ingredients into the bowl and especially loved dumping the chocolate chips at the end.


And of course, she got to have a little taste!  The problem was, she kept wanting to eat it!!  We had to put the bowl up so she couldn't reach it.  She kept sneaking a spoon and digging in!

 
Adam had the job of putting the cookies on the cookie pan to bake!



Here is the finished product!  Doesn't she look proud?  She kills me with those legs of hers!

She approves!