Today I've been making baby food.
The baby food industry has been very successful at creating a cultural expectation of using commercially prepared baby food. When I first got pregnant, like most people, I envisioned buying lots of those cute little jar of things like peas and carrots or turkey dinner. But when I started reading about what foods to feed baby when, I also started to read about cooking those foods yourself. I was surprised to discover that it was really easy to do and just as safe if not safer for baby Safer because you control exactly what ingredients (and the washing of those ingredients and the washing of the pans and spoons and things you use to prepare those ingredients) go into your baby's food.. And when I stopped to think about it made sense. Cooking my own food is healthier and more cost effective, why wouldn't the same be true for a baby? And now I get to brag to people that my eight month old babies have already eaten (and like) things like rutabaga and parsnips.
For the most part cooking baby food is just like any other cooking you just put it into the blender, food processor or mill when your done. And you can freeze prepared food so all you have to do is thaw and feed. I've found silicon ice cube trays or silicon mini muffin tins are the easiest to use because they just peel right off the frozen food.
If your interested have found the following resources helpful:
Healthy Baby Meal Planner by Annabel Karmel
The Petit Appetit Cookbook by Lisa Barnes
So what was cooking today? zucchini, yellow squash, sweet potatoes, cauliflower, and some "teething biscuits". The biscuits are just all natural wheat bread which I baked in the oven for 15 minutes at 350. (The one is from the Annabel Karmel book.) I also figured out a new trick today for my zucchini and yellow squash. Both are high in liquid, so after I steamed them I mashed them lightly in a bowl with a potato masher and drained the liquid before I pureed then. Saving the liquid in case I drained too much.
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