solid foods

Kimberly - posted on 11/07/2008

It's easy and wonderful to make your own baby food. My babies never tasted any boughten baby food at all. I personally started my babies with rice cereal. I took some organic rice and ground it up in a coffee grinder and then cooked it into a cereal. Mix it with some breastmilk and my children gobbled it down. I took the slow and easy route. Never introducing a bunch of things at once and giving lots of time for the tummy to get used to the new food. My ND told me once that the digestive system may be completely healthy but it's new and immature. After the rice I started introducing veggies (carrots, beets, etc). I just took them out of my garden cooked them and blended them in the blender with distilled water. Voile baby food! I waited a while on the fruit just because they can be a little difficult to digest at the earlier stages. Some doctors recommend no meat until 12 years of age but I just hold off until some teeth start showing up and then into the blender they go. As far as the omegas go, I have no experience with hempseed oil but I use Udo's Oil and it has omegas 3,6,9. Once he's old enough to blend different cereals you can add flax seed too. Good Luck!!

Stephanie - posted on 11/07/2008

I found using the blender to be a pain sometimes. It took a while to get it all pureed. Once my daughter got big enough to deal with slightly chunky food, I tried the food grinder on our Kitchen Aid mixer. It worked great! Unfortunately, about a week after I made a big batch of food, my daughter decided she wanted finger food only. So, I mixed a lot of what I had into sauces for my husband and I...

Ashley - posted on 11/06/2008

Thanks everyone!!! i am very excited to make my own food for my little guy! we are on rice cereal right now but soon enough onto veggies!
It is such a positive and healthy thing to take a bit of time and make our own food. Its crazy to me how much salt and other junk some baby food has... some even has soy which i found so odd.
so thanks everyone for the support!!!!

Angie - posted on 11/05/2008

Hi I have been making my own baby food for my 5 month old. I have made peas, carrots, and sweet potatoes. I steam them with just a little water in the microwave and then I put them in the food processor and add water to help them get smooth enough.and then because I want to make sure they are smooth I push the veggies through a strainer. I then put them into ice cube trays and freeze them. When I feed Lilly I take our 2 ice cubes and put them in the microwave on defrost. For applesauce I just buy unsweetened applesauce at the store it is allot cheaper.

Jana - posted on 11/05/2008

Sorry I just read your other question. I found that my blender was so much faster then any food mill. Although you shouldn't use it for potatoes/sweet potatoes because it will make the starch break down and get slimy, use a hand masher for that. As for adding water, add enough to make it smooth. You can always add more to thin it out when you feed your little one. As your son gets older you can puree half and mash half to make the food thicker but it still taste the same.



Good luck have fun trying new things.

Jana - posted on 11/05/2008

www.annabelkarmel.com I bought a book and read it but once I got that idea of where to start I ended up making most of my daughter's food without a recipe. I am so happy to hear about other moms making their own baby food!!! I love that all of her food tasted like real food and it really isn't hard to do. Plus you can mix flavors and create your own portion size to be less wasteful.



My one tip for making your own baby food is to skip the ice cube trays or freezer container ment for making baby food and buy a silcone mini-muffin pan. Once it is frozen they pop out so easy, just fill a zip top bag and back in the freezer it goes.



Good luck and I hope you get tons of compliments when you tell people you make your own baby food!!!

Stephanie - posted on 11/05/2008

SUPER BABY FOOD. GREAT BOOK, RECIPES...GREAT NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION! I MAKE ALL OF MY DAUGHTERS FOOD. ALL FROM THE TIPS AND RECOMMENDATIONS OF THIS BOOK.

I HAVE MADE HER CEREAL FROM DAY ONE AND SHE STILL HAS IT DAILY FOR BREAKFAST (CALLED PORRIAGE) IT'S A MUST HAVE BOOK FOR MOMS THAT WANT THE BEST FOR THEIR BABIES AND HOMEMADE!

Natasha - posted on 11/05/2008

I did once a day, usually dinner, then he started to get all grunty one day at lunch as he saw me eating, so then it was 2. Just go with your gut. Don't worry too much about him not liking it too much. He was on a liquid diet, so I am sure the texture above all else is quite a change. I added breastmilk to it and made it super runny at first, gradually adding more cereal to make it thicker. The breastmilk was, at least in my head, a dual purpose, 1-it was an extra way for me to know he was getting enough of it, and 2-he was used to the taste, so I figured would make the cereal go down easier.

Ashley - posted on 11/05/2008

Again thank-you as i am finding all the information helpful!
I tried to give my son rice cereal today but have some more questions. Do i feed him the cereal once a day at first or go right to three times daily? And he was not a big fan of the cereal, does this mean he is not ready?

Natasha - posted on 11/04/2008

Yes! If for no other reason that it won't blend otherwise lol Don't worry about adding too much, you can always add a bit of cereal to thicken things up. Just make sure to use clean water. I read somewhere to not use the water you cook the food in, I don't know why... I find now, even though I don't puree his ground beef or chicken anymore, I have to add water to the ice cube trays after putting the meat in, if I don't, the cubes just crumble apart.

Ashley - posted on 11/04/2008

Thanks so much for all the great advice! You know you're a mom when you get super excited to start solid foods!
Another question though, do i need to add water to purees?

Natasha - posted on 11/04/2008

Myself, I just boiled food them whipped it in the blender (apparently not supposed to use the water you cook the food in, so I used water from our cooler), and froze it in an ice cube tray (makes doses super easy). Sweet potatoes, squash, turnip, my son loves everything. As he got older, I used a food mill for grittier texture and would mix veggies together, or just grind up frozen veggies. Now I either use my hand chopper or just a fork. I also just cooked up plain ground beef or chicken, and same as above, pureed when he was younger, then left a little chunkier, now just as is. Can't speak for the omega stuff, I would think they get plenty from breastmilk or formula, whichever they get. I don't think you need any special recipes, since they have to be on the same food for a few days at the beginning anyways, and their taste buds are far more sensitive than ours, so no seasoning is needed anyways. He also like lima beans, and beets, I did give him a lot of premade fruits, as I found veggies easier, and there is such a large variety of fruit, it was a lot easier for me to do it that way than to cook up 4 or 5 different fruits at a time. Good luck! You will find it's super easy!

Loreena - posted on 11/04/2008

There's a great book by Annabel Karmel called First Meals. Her website also looks interesting http://www.annabelkarmel.com/

She has good recipes and practical advice about getting your babies started on foods, like steaming the food rather than boiling when cooking to make purees. Freezing the purees in ice cube trays to have small portions right for your babies etc. Not sure about the hempseed oil.

Alison - posted on 11/04/2008

i dont know what the current research suggests...my son is 3 1/2 years old.we started solids at about 5 months because i wasn't making enough milk to satisfy him completely..i think we started with applesauce, but i remember that we were careful to only start one new thing at a time and have that be the only new thing for a few days to make it easy to recognize a reaction...we made about 95% of our stuff...anytime we would boil potatoes or peas or squash we'd pick a few out before we added butter/seasoning and mash it up...freeze them in ice cube trays and store in ziplock baggies with the date and you're good to go - they make perfect serving sizes..just add a little water to anything too thick...but we did beets, carrots, yams, squash, berries...essentially anything we ate we would smoosh up and freeze and slowly introduce - he'll eat almost anything you put in front of him now...knock on wood! OH and i'd hold off on anything that is a known allergy in yours or hubby's family...