Crazy Concoctions for Your Baby

Ever since K was born I was excited to make my own baby food. It is cheaper than doing the store bought jars, is often better quality, and most of all it is so much fun. I started with some relatively simple purees such as peas, carrots and applesauce and quickly transitioned to more elaborate mixes. H recently turned six months so we started her on purees. I'm excited to get creative again. There are many good sources for information on making your own baby food both online and in book form. One of the best websites for this that I have found is wholesomebabyfood.com.

Since there are no known food allergies in our family, I was pretty confident in giving K many different ingredients without necessarily waiting a few days in between them to test for reactions. I did start slow in the first month, but then was much less cautious beyond that. I did however, skip non-yogurt dairy, honey, and nuts until he was 10 or 11 months old.

 

I love to cook and rarely follow recipe books so I took a very similar attitude towards making baby food. My two biggest rules were:

1.     Don't be afraid of using spices. Short of very spicy or salt I tried to really branch out of the traditional baby food box. Think mild curry, paprika, cumin, garlic, nutmeg. . . the possibilities are endless.
2.     Don't allow preconceived notions of what is a good combination get in the way of trying new things. I mixed all sorts of weird ingredients together, most of it was a hit and some of it wasn't. I don't know if his early meals had anything to do with it, but to this day, K loves a huge variety of food and is very non-picky.

As H starts trying new things I will share some of my less traditional recipes here. For now there isn't much to tell because she has just this week started some two ingredient purees. I don't remember much of what I made for K, it may have been only a year and a half ago but I have a major case of mommy amnesia. There is one that sticks out in my mind so I'll share that for starters.

Ingredients

• 1 ripe avocado
• 1 1/2 cups of baby carrots
• 1/2 tsp of cinnamon

Steam the carrots on the stove until they are very soft and mush them with a fork in a bowl. Allow them to cool for a few minutes. To the mix add a whole avocado. I cut it into smaller pieces with a knife and then use the fork to mush it into the carrots. Finally mix in the cinnamon and mix well. Freeze what won't be used within 48 hours. The avocado gives this mix a really nice creamy texture while the carrots and cinnamon give it a nice natural sweetness. This was one of K's favorite mixes. As he got a little older I would steam the carrots less so they remained lumpier.

With K's food I would pour his purees into ice cube trays for freezing and then would put the cubes in Ziploc bags in the freezer. It was super convenient to just take a cube and warm it up a little before feeding him. This time around I purchased some BPA free silicone freezer cups specifically made for baby food from Target. The safer plastic makes it worth the expense in my opinion, plus there is the added bonus that they are microwave safe for when I am in a hurry to defrost a batch. I like the Munchkin brand ones but if you google "baby food freezer cups" you will see there are many products out there for this purpose.

Bon Appetit!