Baby Food Attempt #1

We finally made the leap!  At 5.5 months, T got her first taste of real food.  Saturday I mashed up part of an overripe banana, mixed in some milk, and let her try a few bites of the pureed food.  She loved it!  She slurped the first bites down no problem, more intent on playing with her new slick bib.  But then she decided it was pretty tasty and started grabbing the spoon and shoving it in her mouth.  So cute!  Of course, after feeding her, I dug out the book I purchased about making your own baby food and read that you should start with veggies, not fruit. Whoops!

After the first attempt I decided to "re-start" and do it right.  I got out the amazing Baby Bullet set my mother-in-law purchased for us and got it all washed up.  The book suggested we start with either avocados or sweet potatoes.  The rule of thumb is to focus on one food for 4 days before adding anything new, to ensure that you can identify the culprit if anything causes a negative reaction.  Target netted me a couple of HUGE sweet potatoes ($0.89 each) and a couple of avocados ($1.29 each).  I started with the sweet potatoes, peeling and dicing each one.  Those suckers were tough to cut!  My friend had to give me tips because, believe it or not, I don't eat potatoes and don't have a clue how to prepare them.

After dicing the potatoes, I put them in a steamer, inside my big sauce pan with some water at the bottom.  Cooked on medium-low with a lid, it took about 25 minutes for them to soften.  Wow, I was not expecting it to take that long! 

Raw

 Cooked

The next adventure was actually pulverizing them in the Baby Bullet.  It worked pretty well once I realized that I needed more liquid.  I used 2 oz of milk for just 3/4 a potato, and still needed to add water!  The book recommended using the left over water used from steaming, which worked well.  I used only water for the remainder of the potato, because I'd frozen the rest of my milk already.  One potato made enough food for all 6 baby jars, 6 cubes, plus two mini-Glad ware containers.  Wow!  That is 14 servings for under $2.00 total.  That is about $0.14 a serving.  The last time I checked one jar of baby food was around $1.50 a serving.  Not bad!