Table Foods

So I have been giving Dylan puffs, mum-mums, and cheerios for about a month or so now and he has gotten a lot better. I figured it was time to try more table foods. Over the past week I tried bananas, cut up into half moons (complete failure...got a couple pieces down and then gagged so bad that he threw up all his food), carrots (didn't care for them), and today I thought I'd try some new ones as suggested by Sabrina and Jen had said Brayden tried too...toast! Well, he didn't gag really, but he didn't like it! I even put a little grape jelly on it, what the heck! Next, I tried some mini club crackers (broken into little pieces), and he enjoyed those a little more, but was just interested in his mush. Oh well...we'll keep trying.

I think tomorrow I'm going to try some cottage cheese with him....we'll see!

Just a little addition...

So, I'm definitely not as creative or determined as Carissa and Kristen, but I give it my best. Yesterday I made my second batch of baby food for Brayden. I am still at the premixing stage so they are not that creative. I just went to the store, bought what was on sale, steamed it, blended it and froze it.

Something that I found useful is to freeze the purees in ice cube containers and then, when frozen, place them in a labeled bag. They are then in single servings and ready to defrost and eat. I also like that I have different size ice cub trays so I can have different options depending on how hungry Brayden is.

Another idea that I just had yesterday is to reuse the Gerber food containers for travel food containers. I bought some mini containers from the dollar store but they are beginning to be too small and it is hard to fit the frozen food in them. So the Gerber containers are bigger and then you can also judge how much they are getting, since it seems that the world bases their baby food consumption on one Gerber container. It also is a budget friendly idea! :)

Here is all of my hard work....guess we are going to have a orange kid in a few weeks!

Carrots, Cauliflower, Peaches, Butternut Squash, Sweet Potatoes

I STILL have yet to find whole milk yogurt. Anyone got any suggestions?

Some new ones...

Now that Dylan has had most fruits and vegetables that he can have at this age, I have started some combos just to mix it up. Some new ones that I tried...all to his liking...

Avocado and banana yogurt: just mashed them together, mixed in some yogurt and ready to go!

Spinach, banana, apple yogurt: In a blender, put a bag (6oz) of spinach - uncooked, two bananas, 1/4 cup yogurt, 1/2 apple (baked) and pureed it up. It is a bit runny so we've given it to him in the morning with cereal mixed in. He loved it...but it made for some stinky poop!

Carrot, mango, and apple puree: carrots and apples were cooked, mango was not

Sweet potatoes with white potatoes: white potatoes were just a filler really since they don't have much nutritional value.

Banana cereal or yogurt: I don't know why it surprises me so much that he can eat a whole banana! Just mash it up and mix it with cereal or yogurt.

And turns out he likes the chicken! At first he just gagged on it. I waited a few weeks and now he loves with. I have to mix it with quite a bit of veggies otherwise I think it is too dry. But I'll take it! So glad I didn't have to throw it all away.

...those are the latest!

Making Homemade Rice (plus more!)

Hello,

So.. Carissa invited me to be a contributor to this blog and I finally have something to post but first here is a little bit on why I decided to make my own baby food.

1. Healthier-I figured that by making my own food that I could monitor what Adelyn (5.5months) is eating and also try to have her eat as much organic/natural as possible. It seems weird that I am more concerned with her health than mine (I don't eat organic) but for some reason I want better for her.

2. Cost-Since I want to try to have Adelyn eat mostly organic I thought I would save $$ by finding organic fruits, veggies, grains and yogurt on sale and then pureeing them and freezing-I have actually been finding some pretty good sales and coupons!

3. Fun-I have found that making my own food is lots of fun and it is exciting to see how things puree and freeze.

Ok, here is my experience with whole grain brown rice, oatmeal, black beans and yogurt (Adelyn is eating beans and yogurt earlier than recommended since she had weak weight gain at her 4month dr. appointment and we are trying to get her to pack on the pounds (well-in this case ounces).

Whole Grain Brown Rice (organic): Purchased in Bulk for $2/2lbs at Vitamin Cottage (Denver, Co)

(my rice (left) and oatmeal (right) powder)

Steps:

1. Grind the grains (uncooked) in Brad's coffee grinder until a powder consistency.

2. Cook- 1/4 cup of powder in 3 cups boiling water-I found you need to whisk it constantly in order to avoid clumps. Although, I found that even after I whisked and whisked it still created tiny clumps-but Adelyn still ate the tiny clumps fine. I took it off the stove once it looked a lot like "Cream of Wheat" consistency.

I think it looks a lot like Cream of Wheat

(sorry for the bad picture-it was taken from my phone)

3. Set aside some to eat right away (I added additional water to make it more runny)while putting the rest in the fridge for later.

4. Mix in some sort of veggie (or beans!-see info below for beans) since the rice tastes pretty bland.

Oatmeal (organic)-Purchased in Bulk for $2/2lbs at Vitamin Cottage (Denver, Co)

1. Grind the grains (uncooked) in Brad's coffee grinder until a powder consistency.

2. Cook- 1/4 cup of powder in 3 cups boiling water-whisk continuously but still got lots of tiny clumps.

3. Set aside some to eat right away (I added additional water to make it more runny)while putting the rest in the fridge for later.

4. Mix in some sort of fruit.

-we also made steel cut oats for breakfast one morning recently and gave the left overs to Adelyn. The oatmeal we made for ourselves was obviously not made from a powder but what I ended up doing was just taking the regular cooked oats, added water and using my hand mixer wand thingy, I mixed the oats until they looked pretty runny. I guess I used enough water because the oats never turned into a paste (like I've read online).

Black Beans (organic)-these beans were canned and purchased at Whole Foods for $1 on sale. (I only bought one because I wanted to see if they would actually puree and if Adelyn would like them)

1. Rinse beans

2. Puree beans to right consistency

3. Set some aside to feed to baby and put rest in fridge.

The beans pureed to a really nice consistency (I wanted to eat them all-it was so good!). Adelyn really likes them and she even ate black beans and rice when I mixed it with the rice I made.

Yogurt (organic)-Stonyfield Plain large container purchased at Whole Foods on sale for $2.66 (I think). **I have found a lot of Stonyfield coupons on the internet for $1 off a big container-what a deal!

Adelyn really really loves yogurt. We purchased "Yobaby" vanilla yogurt first to see if she liked it and we hit a home run-she loves it. So I saw the large container of Stonyfield yogurt on sale at Whole Foods and bought it-but there is a problem-I won't eat it (it's whole milk and delicious but I'm not the one who needs to pack on the pounds) and Adelyn won't be able to eat all of it before it goes bad. So today I decided to freeze most of it. The jury is still out on if it freezes well but I have high hopes (Stonyfields website says that their yogurt can be frozen). We will see. :)

-Kristen

(sidenote: after going back and re-reading my post I felt like it kinda came off snobby-that was not my intention! I am not an organic snob and I only buy organic when it's on sale and when it is basically the same price as the non-orgainic. Feeding Adelyn organic (only) is not something that I think will be possible forever but for right now it is doable. I hope I didn't offend anyone.)

Cooking Marathon

7 Months

I have had a few rounds now of making just a couple foods at a time so this time I decided I would make a bunch! Three hours worth! I made mangos, apples, pears, zucchini/yellow squash, carrots/parsnips, and chicken!!

Mangos: (1st time) Random purchase. They were really cheap...and huge! I let them get pretty ripe, so there was no need to cook them. Just sliced them up and pureed them in the magic bullet and they're ready to go. Two huge mangos = 12 oz. No added water as these pureed to be pretty thin, I'll probably add a little cereal to thicken up when I give them to Dylan. Beware though, as I read the tropical fruits tend to be more allergenic...just a rash so I'm not too worried, but probably won't give any new foods for the first couple days of mangos.

Apples: (1st time) Thanks to Jenny for picking some apples for us! Peel, slice or cube, and bake at 350 for about 20 minutes. Added a little cinnamon and pureed in blender with some water. I later decided to mix these with the pears that I made almost exactly the same way. I just decided to do a little combo for a different taste, and I find the pears to be very thin so the apples actually thickened them up a little bit. 8 small/medium apples + 4 pears = 20 oz.

Zucchini and Yellow Squash: (1st time) The website I've been using says this is a great first food. I love these vegetables, but I find them to be very watery when overcooked, so I figured they would puree very thin. Turns out that wasn't the case. They say the skins can be hard to digest at first, but at 7-8 months you should be able to leave them on. I left the skins on, sliced them up and actually sauteed them with a tiny bit of oil and oregano. Once they were pretty well cooked, I pureed them in the magic bullet. I actually had to add a little water! 1 zucchini and 1 yellow squash = 10 oz.

Carrots/Parsnips: (1st time with combo) So I actually made sweet potato and parsnip combo last time, and he LOVED it. I think it was his favorite. This time I decided to do this combo because I could just make them both together. Just peeled both of them, cut them up and boiled them until they were tender...maybe 20 minutes, didn't keep track. Pureed them in the blender with just about all of the water they were boiled in. 5 carrots and 3 large parsnips = 28 oz. And seriously, they are pretty delicious...tastes like fall on a spoon!

Chicken: (1st time) You ready for this...Dave was actually the one to do it...we made a whole chicken. I know, crazy, but they say the best is the dark meat, so I thought...why not? There have got to be some advantages to having a chef in the house ;) So I'm not sure if Dylan will like this because it really is a different texture, but hopefully he will! I mixed the dark meat with some carrot puree and basil and mixed the light meat with some apples with the cinnamon. This took quite a bit of water to get it to the right texture, but actually didn't taste too bad. We'll see about this one. Hard to say how much this one yielded, but I would guess 24 oz of just pureed chicken...yum!

I'll keep you posted on how he liked all of it! :)

First Fruit

6 Months

I didn't really have a big reason to waiting a month to start fruits. It just kind of happened because I wanted him to eat several vegetables before I gave him fruit and I just took that long to give him those. For his first fruit I decided to do pears. A couple weeks later I made peaches. And I also introduced butternut squash...one of my favorites, especially in the fall!

Pears: (1st time) Easy. Peel, cut out the core, chop, and bake in baking dish with small amount of water on bottom. Bake until tender. Pureed in food processor. No water needed, good consistency without.

Peaches: (1st time) I never knew that peaches smelled so good!! It made me want to make a peach cobbler, and I am not the biggest fat of peach cobbler. Yum! Anyway, for these guys, I cut them in half, took out the pit, placed them flat side down in a baking dish with an inch of water. Bake at 400 degrees until tender and skin starts to pucker. Take them out, drain the water (you can keep some, but I didn't need it), and let them cool for a little so you can peel the skin off without burning your fingers. The skin just comes right off if they're done. I pureed them in a food processor. They turned out to be very thin and I had to put rice cereal in them to make it easier to feed to Dylan. 4 peaches = 24 oz

Butternut Squash: (1st time) Made this the same way I make it for myself. Cut it in half, take out the seeds, put it on a baking sheet flat side with a half inch of water and bake for 45 minutes. Then I scooped it out with a spoon into the food processor. Use the extra water to get to appropriate consistency.

Orange

5 Months

Carrots and Sweet Potatoes

Carrots: (1st time) About as easy as it gets. Peel, chop, boil, and puree with some of the water it was boiled in. I added a tiny bit of butter for flavor and to help break down the vitamins so Dylan digests those better. (That's what I've heard anyway).

Sweet Potatoes: (1st time) Also, pretty darn easy. Bake, peel, chop, and puree with a little butter and water. Tasty!

First Food

5 months

It begins! I started with the typical rice cereal for Dylan's first food. I just bought this from the store, didn't even think that you could make it...maybe next time. I gave him cereal for a week and was not having any issues, so I decided to move on and make my first food...

Peas: (1st time) Not the easiest food to make, but I wanted to start with a green vegetable. The best I could do (or was willing to do) was frozen peas. It was a challenge to find frozen peas without salt added, but they are out there! I cooked them as the bag instructed and got out the ol' food mill. I cranked and cranked and cranked...just green juice! I was determined to get something, so I kept going and going and going....and finally...just when I was about to stop....success! The mushy stuff was passing through and the tough skins were staying in the food mill.

Helpful tip from my doctor for food consistency:
Stage 1- When you turn the spoon over, the food pours off.
Stage 2- When you turn the spoon over, the food does more of a plop.
Stage 3- When you turn the spoon over, the food may actually stay on the spoon.

New Blog!

So as I start to make all of these new baby foods for Dylan I am feeling like I needa place to keep track of what I am doing. It will be a good reference for me to see how I make foods, and to know when I started foods for the first time. I figured it would be too much on my other blog and people wouldn't really want to hear it, so here we are...the NewBabyChef! Dave, I know it should probably be the NewBabyCook, but give me a break! :)