3/7/11 – Topic #7 – Homemade Baby Food

Today was Monday. A pretty ordinary Monday. Work is work, home is home. We’ve been making a conscious effort to spend one on one time with Olivia at home, before bed lately. She likes to chase each other around the house, she’s getting into “hide and seek” and scaring people lately. She just likes to run around and play with us. If you sit down, she’ll grab your arm and say “mo, peeeeese”. How can you resist that?!? Tonight Christian was giving her piggy back rides and she thought it was the best thing EVER. She was laughing so hard, harder than I’ve heard her laugh in a LONG time. We eventually put Amelia up there too, and they were both laughing. It was fun…it’s nights like this I breath a sigh of relief and think “THIS is why you have kids”. So much fun.

When it comes to homemade baby food, I don’t know that I’ve ever really gotten into the details of why I’m doing it. I thought I’d write about that today.

First and foremost, making your own baby food is SO much cheaper. It really is. As I mentioned before, in just over a month, I paid off my baby bullet with the savings. It’s great, saving money anywhere we can do it is a huge bonus, especially as your family grows and your income does not!

More than that though, homemade baby food is so fresh. The smell, the color, and nutrients, it’s just perfect, it’s the way food should be. Olivia has been off of baby food for WELL over a year, yet we have jars of Gerber baby food in our cupboard from her that is still “good”…still not expired. Now, that is not fresh. Talk about preservatives! I like grabbing the fresh and frozen produce, and knowing exactly what she’s eating.

I did initially consider doing it with Olivia. I remember starting to read up on it, and checking out some websites, but for some reason, it just seemed so overwhelming. I’m not sure why, everything is super easy, rather quick to make, and nothing really confusing about it. I think it’s just getting started that is overwhelming. Once I made the decision to do it with Amelia, and dove in head first, I realized just how easy it really is, and I’m so happy I did it. I mean, I cook our food, I cook Olivia’s food, why not cook Amelia’s food too?!

For anybody on the fence about making your own food, I really suggest you do it. Trust me, you won’t regret it. All you need is an appliance of some sort…a good blender, a good food processor, etc. I have my baby bullet (which I do highly recommend), and I know Babies R Us has a similar product. Anything will do. I use the website http://www.wholsomebabyfood.com. It has all of the recipes, instructions and information you could ever need. It’s a great place to start.

Here are some pictures from the piggy back sessions. Amelia took a nose dive a few times, but still thought it was pretty funny (thank goodness dad has some quick reflexes!).