Sweetpea is already 7 months old. Her introduction to solid foods has been slow, partly because of her disinterest and partly because of a recent ear infection. But over the last week she’s finally started to show interest. So the time has come, once again, to make baby food.
WHY?
Making baby food is not complicated, especially in the early stages. It’s also good thing to try and do. Why? Here are my reasons for making homemade baby food:
- I select fruit and veggies at the peak of their season. Picking seasonal produce means that it’s often tastier, cheaper, and grown closer to home. Yay, yay and yay!
- I choose organic produce. Organic means that I’m not exposing Sweetpea’s little body to harsh agricultural chemicals and pesticides.
- I control what goes into the food. No extra salt, sugar or random thickening agents here!
- I create food combinations that are unique and suited to my baby.
- I expose my baby to the process of making her food.
HOW TO AFFORD ORGANIC?
Now you know why I make Sweetpea’s baby food, but how do I afford organic baby food? We often think that affordable and organic don’t belong in the same sentence, but that’s not true. Here are some strategies I use to get affordable organic fruits and veggies:
- Go to a farmers’ market… and makes friends with the farmers.
- Buy seasonal produce.
- Buy in bulk.
- Forage in the wild, your neirghbourhood or your mom’s garden.
- Don’t buy organic. Yes, you read that correctly! The truth is, I don’t always buy organic when making baby food. I rely on the EWG’s Shopper Guide to Pesticide to guide me at the store. I buy organic apples, carrots and pears (high pesticides), but non-organic avocado or mango (low pesticides).
For more ideas Growing a Green Family has 70+ tips on saving money on organic food.
HOW TO MAKE BABY FOOD?As I mentioned before making baby food is simple but a few basic tools can make the job easier:
- pots and/or steamer
- A food processor (good for making large quantities), hand held blender (smaller quantities) or small food grinder (small quantities).
Basically cook the fruit or vegetable (if it needs to be cooked) in a steamer or boiling water until soft and then puree the food to an appropriated consistency. Make sure the food isn’t too hot before feeding you little one. That’s it! Some good first foods for a baby around 6 months are pureed apple, pear (raw or cooked), carrot, butternut squash, pumpkin, sweet potato, banana (raw), mango (raw), papaya (raw), and avocado (raw).
Organic carrot, Organic apple and yam puree.
FOR MORE INSPIRATIONS?
Organically Raised: Conscious Cooking for Babies and Toddlers
read a review by Growing a Green Family.
read a review by Growing a Green Family.
3 comments
Sweetpea is so adorable! We did many of these things with LW when she was smaller (in fact I have that same food mill). Now she's on to table food, when she's eating anything, that is (how toddlers survive without starving is beyond me). You might enjoy the blog One Hungry Mama, which is all about feeding family and little ones – I've found some good suggestions there!
How on earth is she almost 7 months old!? I'm glad food is starting to be a little easier, hopefully she will be easy to feed like Monkey.
How is her ear doing? We need an update on her! Is she crawling? I can't wait to see you guys in a couple weeks. 🙂
This is a great post – I'm starting to feed Bunny some rice cereal on our Dr's recommendation and am starting to think about this a lot more 🙂