Baby food making

Recently, I've had a lot of people asking me how I work full time and make all of Finn's food homemade. There are a few reasons I chose to make his food homemade. 1-It's super easy 2-I know where all his food comes from 3-I can control the consistency and 4-It's saved us hundreds of dollars a month! I have listed some tips below and also some websites I used for reference. Please let me know if you have any questions.

1-I only make his food once a month. It's usually around the middle of each month. I take a look at Super Baby Foods to see what types of food he can have the next month and then I add them to my grocery list. I always do this on Sundays, because I have a fabulous husband who will help while Finn is napping!

2-I buy frozen peas, green beans, peaches, and mango instead of the real thing. The peaches and mango I just ;et defrost enough to where it will puree. And the peas and green beans I have yet to master. I can't seem to get the consistency right for Finn. To be completely honest, last month I just gave him organic gerber because it was on sale at Kroger.

3-I buy bananas, plums, pears, carrots, and chicken at Costco in bulk because of cost. For example, at Costco-bananas are $1.32 for 3 lbs. Which means I can make a month supply of breakfast for $2.63-that's $.08 a serving!!! (by the way, his serving is 3 cubes of bananas and 4 tbsp of oatmeal)

4-I try to do everything at the same time so I'm pretty scheduled. Here's an example of my batch cooking: I put the chicken in the crockpot in the morning. (I cook enough for him and us-I also do some freezer cooking for us-maybe another post on that later if you are interested).  I pull out the mango and peaches so they can be defrosting. Then I put the sweet potatoes, potatoes, pears, butternut squash in the oven at 350. While that's cooking I can steam carrots, broccoli, and asparagus. And while that's steaming I can go ahead and puree avocado. After the avocado, I puree the peaches, then the mangoes. By the time I have that cleaned up the steamed stuff is ready to be pureed. And once that's clean the stuff in the oven has cooled and is ready to be pureed. And I wait to do the chicken at the end of the day, its best to cook for 8 hours. It actually purees really well.

So that's it. Just a few tips on how I do it. If you are interested in more details, like how much I buy or how I freeze things. Please comment or email me, i'd be happy to tell you what works for me!

Last but not least, here are a few sites I have found super helpful!


Wholesome Baby Food (this is one of my favorite sites, thanks to Michelle)
Once a Month Mom (this is also a great resource for freezer cooking)
Homemade Baby Food Recipes (this also has an email list you can subscribe to)
Babywise blog (I used this for sleeping tips too)

And if you readers out there know of any other helpful sites, please post comments!