Fresh Fruits & Veggies
I found this website, Wholesome Baby Food, which is AMAZING! It has recipes, step by step instructions, freezing/storing suggestions, and lists of foods that your baby can eat at the different stages. It has been my baby food Bible!
We are eating stage one foods and so far she has had bananas (loves!), sweet potatoes (mmm.. not so much), avocado (loves!), acorn squash (loves!), apples (loves!), and peaches (we made some sour faces with these).
She loves bananas so much that she "mmmm.mmms" the whole time I am feeding them to her. I can mix something she isn't crazy about, such as sweet potatoes with bananas or apples is she enjoys it a whole lot more. After I defrost her food from the freezer, I usually put cereal in it to thicken it up and to give her extra iron. Last week, I pureed zucchini, yellow squash, carrots, apples, and peaches and put them in the freezer.
I bought the Baby Bullet Turbo Steamer and use that to steam my veggies.
After steaming, I put them in my food processor and puree. I add water as needed to thin it out. Norah Kate likes her food more soupy.
I have used both the food processor and the blender. They both work pretty good.
Once you are satisfied with the consistency of your puree, pour it into ice cube trays and freeze. Once they are frozen just pop them out into ziploc bags. I put two cubes into a milk freezer bag, label and date.
Voila! Baby food made easy :)
I really like my steamer for multiple reasons 1.) By steaming foods they maintain more nutrients 2.) It cooks the food in minutes (the longest cycle is 13 minutes) 3.) The Baby Bullet Steamer also can sterilize bottle nipples, pacis, etc, and it will defrost frozen baby food. I bought it for like $25 at Walmart.
Norah Kate gets cereal at lunch and veggies at supper time. We will eventually work up to cereal for breakfast, veggie/fruit for lunch, and veggie/fruit for supper. We have followed the "four day" rule. Each time I introduce a new food, she gets it for four days in a row to make sure she is not going to have an allergic reaction to it, then we try something new. I don't stress to much about how much she eats either. If I can only get her to take a few bites of something, then so be it... She is still breastfeeding so I know she is still getting all of her nutrients.
Pears will be the next thing I make for her. I have also started some combinations for her with foods we have already tried, such as apples and sweet potatos or bananas and apples. Don't worry, I taste test everything before I feed it to her!
A few things I have learned, peaches and apples don't go very far at all! Four peaches made only 3 servings. And 3 apples only made 6 or 8 servings. I will probably buy adult all natural applesauce from the grocery store for apples, and may try a bag of frozen peaches next time. With everything else though, a little went a long way!
I thought about doing the Baby Led Weaning which is when you introduce pieces of food rather than purees. For instance, you would give the baby slices of a banana or sweet potato and let them feed themselves. This makes me really nervous because of choking! I gave Norah Kate a banana and let her chew on it the other day just to see what she would do and she LOVED it, but then hunks of the banana started falling off in her mouth and scared me to death. For now we will stick with our pureed mush and might try Baby Led Weaning later.
Oh and she has two pretty pearly whites on her bottom jaw now! They came through two weeks ago!
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