Simply Homemade: Baby Food

Brecken is just getting to the point where he's beginning to eat baby food on a regular basis. As I did with Taeya, I'll be making my own. I find that it really doesn't take long at all, it costs very little and I can even make baby food for different stages.

This week, I started by peeling, cubing, and boiling 4 or 5 large sweet potatoes. I first took out about two cups of the hot water from the pot, I then strained the rest of the water off the sweet potatoes and poured about 1/3 of the cooked potatoes into my Vita-Mix. I pureed the sweet potatoes and added a little of the reserved water until it was the smooth consistency I was looking for. I put it into ice cube trays to freeze in small portions.

I then repeated the pureeing process two more times. However, the second time, I left some small lumps in the puree mixture to make it like a stage 2 baby food. On the third batch, I left larger lumps and also froze it in a Popsicle tray as I was out of ice cube trays and knew that Brecken would be able to eat the larger portions by the time he is eating the larger lumps.

Making baby food is very quick and easy. Best of all, by making it yourself, you know exactly what your baby is eating. Since I aim to have my babies eating table food by the time they are 10 months old, I really only have to make a few batches of baby food before they're eating what our family eats. I start offering finger foods as soon as they can pick it up. Brecken already feeds himself baby Mum-mums and loves them! At just under 5 months, he does really well getting the mum-mum into his mouth, sucking and even chewing on them.

Some of the things I puree into baby food are:
Bananas, Mango, Avacado, Pears, Peaches, Mixed berries, Peas, Organic carrots.

I've done applesauce in the past but this time I just bought a jar of 'no sugar added' applesauce because it's cost effective and what we eat as well. I purchase organic fruits/veggies sometimes but I'm not super worried about everything being organic. However, I do only buy organic carrots for babies because there is something that non-organic carrots can have that isn't good for young babies.

I don't do any sort of pureed meat because it's not realistic to what we eat. When he's a couple months older, I'll begin offering him small pieces of chicken to start with. He'll also get protein from beans and eggs. 

If you've made baby food, what do you make? What advice do you have regarding baby food? Everyone does it a bit different and I'd love to hear what you think.