Baby Food!

Yesterday was homemade baby food day!  I am such a procrastinator I put it off until the last possible moment, until only 1 jar of baby food remained.  My life story... waiting til the last minute to do something important... but hey, I always did work best under pressure.  Here's to encouraging all the oral feeding momma's and medical momma's out there to give this baby food thing a whirl. Start small and gain confidence.  It feels so good knowing you are feeding your child something YOU made.  Even if the rest of the house is upside down, you have other children dangling from the living room fan, a pile of dirty dishes in the sink and your laundry room has runneth over... at least you have tangible evidence that you've done something.  But please, don't over-burden yourselves... heck, if they made real food with a real variety for G-buttons, I might just give it a try, but alas, they don't, so here I am.  So, here goes!

Just cut these babies in half (butternut squash), remove seeds, and roast.  I'm inpatient so I roast everything at 425 degrees.  If you are super woman, you can wash seeds and roast for the other kids, but I am not, so mine found their way into the trash :/.  Scoop out tender flesh once cooked and add water or one of the other foods cooking liquid, blend.

Peel, quarter, and core apples, bake until soft.  Mmmm, my favorite.  Baking gives the food such a deeper flavor, and even though Dominic doesn't taste his food most of the time, he will uses the apples for oral feeding trials.

Admire how cute your baby is, you know the little bogger that you are doing all this work for.

 I use frozen organic broccoli and green beans from Costco... super easy, just steam and blend.  SAVE the cooking liquid, you will need it for your drier foods such as the squash, apples, and pears!

I bake as much together as I can.  Here are the pears quartered and cored and res bell peppers.  They'll all go in the same big pot anyhow!

 I use two big packs of organic spinach from Costco and steam.  I love the dark green water left over... the original "Vitamin Water."

Thanks to my parents, I have a Vitamix, but I used a plain old blender for my first three kids.  Here it is in action with the spinach.

Admire your sweet baby...



And kiss his little toes...

Here is the pears and red bell peppers being blended.  The Vitamix does make easier work of this!

 Pour everything into the biggest pot you have.  I'm a nerd so I love to watch this progress to the top.

                                                                           Stir...

 And voila!  You have REAL food, made for a REAL person in about 3-4 hours.  I use canning jars b/c they are glass so you don't have to worry about chemicals from plastic leaching in and because they are cute :).  His new food this go-around is carrots, which is why they are separate.

And here's to one tired momma and one happy baby boy.  Go ahead, drink a Coke.  Nothing like celebrating real, wholesome, homemade food with a non-food product :/.  Hey, you can only do what you can do!

This batch should last about a month.  The mixture includes spinach, broccoli, green beans, red bell pepper, pears, apples, butternut squash with carrots on the side.  He is old enough to start trying meat, so maybe I'll add some chicken next time!