Making Baby Food as aTerrible Cook: Part 2
It has begun! I am now a baby food making fool. I’d say queen, but let’s be real, there is nothing special about what I’m doing here. I know it seems silly to have a cookbook telling you how to puree spinach, lentils, and peas, but like I said in my previous post, I’m a terrible cook (I OVERCOOKED A POTATO DURING THIS PROCESS).
While it is not always easy OR pretty, I’m actually very happy with my first attempt. I tallied it up, the total time I’ve spent in the kitchen (including clean-up) for about six weeks of pureed food is around eight hours. Eight. That’s it. Eight hours over the course of about two weeks to get a plethora of delicious, healthy, natural, food.
I’d started this processing hoping to get three months done at once, but my small-for-her-age baby actually eats a TON and we’ve gone through my entire store of food in just over six weeks.
I started the process out as easily as possible. My first two “purees” were just smashed avocado and banana. I literally took two avocados and two bananas and (separately) smashed them with a fork in a bowl. I scooped those mixtures into my special freezing trays (seen above) and viola! HOWEVER — I won’t be doing this again and I do not recommend freezing these particular foods. The bananas unfreeze all brown and gooey and the avocados turn brown and stringy once completely defrosted. I highly doubt it bothers R, but it makes me queasy. In the future, I’ll just mash up some banana or avocado and give it to her fresh.
My next trial by error suggestion is to watch those pesky zucchinis, spaghetti squashes, and other watery foods. I failed to fully express the water after they cooked, which made them watery and soupy once defrosted. Again, it doesn’t bother the little one, but it’s slightly annoying to defrost a tablespoon of zucchini only to truly have about 1/4 tablespoon of actual food. I made sure not to make that same mistake with the spinach.
At this point in time, R wasn’t really crawling yet, so it was pretty easy to get all of this done right after her nap time. I’d prep anything I could before she woke up — bake the sweet potatoes, cook the lentils, steam the apples; and then puree everything when the LOUD food processor wouldn’t bother her. There were some frustrating moments, like when she refused to be out of my arms for even a minute, and therefore made pureeing anything impossible. But, most of the time I’d have a little activity planned to keep her interested and happy.
Now that R is eight months old (YAY!), I’ve been adding a lot of fun spices to her purees. She’s now enjoying cinnamon, nutmeg, onion powder, and garlic powder. I add just a tiny pinch! I’ve had to purchase a few food pouches for some recent travels and events that kept us away from the house, and I’ve noticed a lot of them have salt added. While every baby and parent is different, I’ve decided to keep salt and sugar out of her diet for the first year at least. It bothers me that so many of these natural and organic baby pouches have salt at all, which is just another reason that I’m so grateful that I have the ability — and the time — to ensure R is getting the types of food and seasonings that I prefer.
All in all, I’d say that making your own baby food certainly has its advantages. I may have gone slightly overboard with the book and trays, but in total, I’d guess that making my own food as opposed to buying it has cut her food costs in half. Not to mention the huge drop in our garbage output and leftover food that I saw when purchasing jars upon jars of baby food. And when you’re living off of one paycheck, every penny counts.
Now for my next adventure of making finger foods and complete meals for R! WISH ME LUCK PLEASE.
