Recap - making your own baby food

For all of you who have been asking me about making your own baby food...

When I first started making my own baby food, I held the premise that by making my own baby food, I know more of what goes into it (did you ever wonder exactly what kind of water went into those jars of baby food??). I also worked by the premise that if I prepare food properly for baby from day 1, they'd like more of the foods that are out there, and would not be prejudiced by badly-prepared food. I mean, seriously - have you ever personally tasted store-bought baby food? Eww. Water-logged, tasteless, didn't resemble what beautiful vegetable they've photographed for their umpteen-million dollar marketing label food - right, if I wasn't going to eat that crap, why the hell would I give it to my baby? It's no wonder so many kids are picky and limited to a palate of chicken nuggets and fried food (hello supersize!): if they ever had a properly-prepared vegetables, they may very well like them instead of turning their noses up at them.

Petit Appetit and Naturally Delicious Meals for Baby were my mind candy when I started, both of which have just gathered dust on the shelves since my first week of food prep, way back when with Baby1. So here are the tools you need:

• Baking pan, preferably non-metallic OR stainless-steel pot
• Food processor OR wire mesh strainer with something to comfortable to hold and press the food through the strainer
  
• Ice-cube tray for freezing individual portions
• Plastic wrap to cover ice-cube tray to fend off freezer burn and other smells
• Ziplock bags or freezer container to contain your cubes of frozen baby food
  

That's it! That's all! No specialty baby food unitaskers, no specialty tools, no additional crap!

General rule - cook your foods until they're just done and softened, but not overcooked; and either puree in your food processor or mash through the strainer. What cooking water you have that is left at the end of cooking, reserve for mixing with the mashed food to desired consistency - that water holds any nutrients that leech out of the veggies during cooking, and it's invaluable to mix into your baby food. Avoid, at least initially, any foods that gives either parent allergic reactions, since some of these allergies can exist in baby as well. And try any new food by itself for 5-7 days, to test for any allergies in baby.

We started with the orange-colored veggies: squash, sweet potatoes, carrots. (Would you believe the joy I felt when our pediatrician told us, "We can just tell which babies are eating a lot of orange-colored food just by looking at the bottom of their feet!")

• For large squashes - cut in half, scoop out the seeds, and set cut-side down in about 1/2" of water. Bake for 1 hour at 350 degrees or until flesh is soft. Allow to cool, then scoop out flesh, and process flesh with baking water in food processor OR mash through your strainer and mix with baking water to desired consistency. Freeze in ice-cube trays for individual servings.
• Sweet potatoes - just either bake or boil until very soft, mash with water to desired consistency.
• Carrots - either steam over boiling water or cook in water until just soft, and process until extremely fine in texture. Mix with the cooking water to desired consistency.

And to really realize exactly how much making your own baby food pays off: make some peas. Steam them in a strainer over about 1/2" of boiling water, and process in a food processor. While peas cool, go to your local supermarket (even go organic!) and buy one of those baby-food jars of peas. Set the store-bought jar and your peas side-by-side. Compare the color - and compare the taste. Last I checked, properly-cooked peas aren't gray and tasteless.

You can go along your entire vegetable aisle and pick and choose what ever you'd like to feed baby. Just two general rules of thumb for veggies: in the starting months of feeding baby real food, and even up until about 1 year old, be careful of fibrousy veggies. It can be very tough to digest in little tummies. And break down the cooked item to as small pieces as possible.

For portability, pick up some glass food containers and put in a cube or two (or in the case now of Baby2, five. He is my little sumo wrestler, and I can't cook enough food for him fast enough.). We have encountered several restaurants willing to help reheat our baby food for us.

Some more base-food ideas:

• Lentils/split peas/beans (good for protein)
• Beets (look out for those diapers!)
• Broccoli (mix with some veggie broth)
• Parsnips
• Squashes - all squashes! Pumpkin, acorn, Japanese, spaghetti (just make sure you grind it up to really fine pieces)
  
• Mushrooms (mix with some veggie broth)
• Asparagus
• Rice - white, brown, red, black, jasmine, basmati, sushi, wild - whichever you'd like! Sister-in-law processed brown rice to a fine meal, and conveniently travels with the rice "powder" and cooks for individual meals. My father has made rice porridge and frozen it into rice cubes for us. If you do use whole brown rice, just make sure you cook it to a much softer texture in the starting months.
• Any not-too-acidic fruit
• Tofu (silken makes for a great protein source and is easy for texture)
  

Then moving on to meats, I did the full gamut. Salmon and non- or low-mercury fish (check EWG the list here), just steam and mix with steaming water. Chicken/beef, I cooked in some water to a well-brothed mixture, and beat in a food processor. Soft meat? Try foie gras. It was one of Baby1's first foods, and she's been expanding her palate ever since. Baby2 is just about due for the same treat.

In terms of seasonings, I held off on salt until about 10/11 months, and even now, I don't season with too much salt. However, I did mix the different base with different herbs so that you get a wider spectrum of flavors in the base foods. Whenever I used dry herbs, I made sure to cook the herbs at the same time that I cooked the veggies, so that they were adequately softened.

After the initial weeks of individual vegetable prep for sake of allergy-testing, we started having a lot more fun being able to mix the allergy-OKed foods. And once I hit just about all the different typical vegetables that I cook in our grown-up meals, and tried out some meats as well, I started combining baby's meals into our nightly cooking. I'd cook our prepped food from my mise en place sans salt/pepper, reserve a small bowl for baby, and move on to season and finish our dishes for Hubby and me. That was when baby's meals really began to be integrated into ours, and when we really felt like we were sitting down to our dinner table together. Yeah, cheesy, I know - but it made a big psychological difference for us at our table.