1. It's Less expensive. Really. Even if you buy organic fruit and vegetables it costs less than buying pre-made non-organic baby food.
2. It's EASY. If you can peel and chop vegetables, use a microwave, plug in and turn on a food processor, and fill ice cube trays with pureed flora, you're good.
3. You will waste less. With homemade babyfood you can prepare any amount of food to suit your baby's appetite. If your baby is a light eater you don't have to run the risk of wasting half of a container of store bought food when he or she gets full. (Note: You should never save leftover baby food from a container your baby has been served from. If you want to save store-bought leftovers you must serve a portion in a separate bowl and then save what's left in the jar to be used within 48 hours.) Frozen cubes of baby food can be warmed in under a minute (30 seconds or so for a single cube). If baby is still hungry after the initial small serving you can then quickly warm another cube---or warm a cube of something else entirely for a bit of variety!
4. More diverse meals--leading to LESS PICKY EATERS. This is my number one reason for making baby food. Not only can you serve foods that you'd never find in a Gerber jar (avocado, anyone? And, yes, I do freeze avocado and banana--neither of which need to be cooked beforehand), you can feed a variety of foods in a single meal: like sweet potatoes followed by peas and then apples. You can also combine cubes to create unique flavors or make less appealing foods more appealing (by combining something like peas with pears or apples, for example--then adding less of the favored food each time you serve the disliked food until baby accepts the taste of what they initially disliked). This also give you freedom to introduce a non-favored food numerous times without wasting entire jars each time your baby turns their head away. Sometimes it takes 15-20 exposures before a baby will accept a new food.
5. Satisfaction. It is really satisfying to make baby food! Well, it is for me. I love the vibrant colors of it (just compare homemade peas to store bought and smile/cringe at the color difference). Seeing the bags lined up (or piled up) in a riot of healthy colors makes me grin. I like that I'm providing my baby with healthy fruit and veggies I chose myself--with the opportunity of seeing the quality of the produce before it became baby food. Not to mention the pieces set aside for myself and my toddler to enjoy. Mmmm.
I wanted to spend more time on this, because this topic is so near and dear to me. I plan to revisit this in several more posts. If anyone who stumbles across this site is interested in making baby food and has questions, please post them in the comments and I'll answer them if I can!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
Great points Alina! I made a lot of my own food when I had time to do so and it was a lot less expensive for the basic foods. Stuff like squash (which tends to be more expensive in the produce section) wasn't as cost effective IMO. Unfortunately for us, no matter how many different foods we gave to Gabby (and she ate a lot of various veggies as a baby), she is still a picky eater. After multiple, multiple introductions of various veggies and foods, I had to give up and stop wasting my money. Now that she is older, we can barter with her a bit, but according to Sesame Street, that is a no-no. (http://www.sesamestreet.org/parents/topics/health/health02) What do you think? Fintan seems to be such a good eater, you probably don't have to do this at all. Guess we need to stop doing this and just keep giving her a variety of foods for her meals.
I agree with a lot of that Sesame street article and do a lot of the things mentioned (for lunch today instead of offering lunch I offerend "smunch". Fintan gets a kick out of funny names like that and it helps ease things along when he's sick especially (as he is now). I took pictures of our "smunch" and I plan to write more about that in another post when I get the chance to upload the pics. :)
One question about wasting money on Gabby, were you buying vegetables that you wouldn't eat yourself? I never seem to waste money in that way (unless we don't entirely finish something before it goes bad) because Pat and I eat it as well.
I do realize that Fintan's good eating habits are partly luck but I also think there are certain things that parents can do to help alleviate pickiness. I'll try to write a post on that topic soon too. I don't know if it will end up helping anyone, but it certainly can't hurt!
We were giving her mainly canned veggies (which Kenton and I don't particularly care for) because she gagged on the frozen or fresh stuff. She had gagging issues with food textures forever. SO, sometimes I would eat some of the canned veggies, but not always. That was where the food wasting came in. All of Gabby's friends ate canned veggies, but I don't really blame her for hating them at times!
Oh I also find making baby food so satisfying!!! I am actually really sad and a little lost now that Lily is nearing one year and moving away from all my home made baby food. I mean, I still make all homemade foods for the kids, but I just feel weird about feeding "real" food to Lily. She's grown up too fast...sniff sniff!!
I'm going to go have a little cry now.
I can understand that, Emily. We did canned veggies for early finger foods. One thing I did (I TOLD you I use my baby-food freezer trays for EVERYTHING) is I put the canned veggies in the trays and covered them with the water from the can. Then I could heat them up in small servings that new finger-food eaters could handle. Worked great and no waste. ;)
Shannon, they DO grow up WAY too fast.
Oh, and Emily, I forgot to mention that I would then FREEZE the trays with the canned veggies and water before coming back later to heat and serve them. Sort of a critical step in the non-waste department. ;)
Post a Comment