Canning baby food

[me&thegals]

WAY worth it financially. I would consider freezing, though, for several reasons. I froze pureed vegetables in ice cube trays, then dumped the cubes into freezer bags. Each cube is pretty much a baby serving of food. Did this for both my kids and saved loads of money and containers.

 

[baymule]

I had a small hand crank baby food grinder. I cooked our food and tried to NOT season it until I took out a portion to grind up for the baby. Here is a link to one similar to the one I had. It was quick, easy and cleaned up quick.

http://www.amazon.com/KidCo-F700-Food-Mill/dp/B000067Q6J

 

[Jared77]

We made our own baby food here. We steamed some of the veggies and cooked down many of the fruits. Then puree them in the food processor, and into ice cube trays. Once frozen we'd put them in ziplock bags and label the bags with what they were. Its really that simple.

Each ice cube of food was almost 1oz so when asked we knew how much our daughter ate. Whatever we didn't produce in our garden we supplemented with the farmers market, local stands, and even hit the U picks to save costs. Its a BIG cost savings. We even did meat, venison, chicken, turkey, etc. cooking them, pureeing them down and mixing them with veggies we'd normally serve if we were eating it.

Just off the top of my head we did apples, pears, peaches, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, all sorts of squash, broccoli, cauliflower, peas, a variety of beans green, pinto, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, just to name a few. Our daughter is 4 so Im trying to think back now. Wasn't much we didn't make honestly for her. I'm even guilty of looking over the flavors of baby food in the store for ideas to make at home.

As your daughter got older we would change the consistency by not grinding it down so fine and the transition to table food was easy since the flavors never changed just the texture gradually. Next thing you know she was eating the whole green bean or whole carrot. Never was a fight.

Couple of tips I can offer:

1) Buy in bulk. I'd always buy a bushel of something when I could sometimes 2 bushels even. Id explain to the seller/growers what I was doing and whats the per bushel price. I always saved when buying this way. Most folks are more than happy to give you a break if you buy like that especially when you tell them its to make baby food. Even if its something different like cauliflower, or broccoli something not normally thought of as buying in bulk ask.

2) Make big batches. Your already making a mess why not do it 1x, make the mess, clean up and be done with it? Go to the dollar store and get your ice cube trays cheap and start cooking. They stack and won't take up a ton of space while the food is setting up. My wife and I would cook a whole bushel at a time of something. Yes your hands will hurt after cutting up 2 bushels of butternut squash, but that will last you a LONG time potentially till your child is eating whatever your cooking. Its the same sized mess for small batches as it is for a big batch so don't make a batch here and there of the same thing like pears is not effective use of your time.

3) If you steam veggies to soften them (for example butternut squash) use the water that's left in the bottom of the pot to add back into the food processor to help get the consistency you want. It will have some nutrients in it from when you steamed them. Better than pouring them down the drain.

4) Don't be afraid to get creative. We often paired fruits and/or veggies together to make a bigger fuller batch when we made baby food. If you have left over peas, why not pair them with broccoli? Or with carrots? As mentioned above when we did pork, we'd add sweet potatoes and freeze those together. They tasted great. I don't know if it really helped our kids development but it meant we had that many more meals.

We always carried a small collapsible cooler with us that had our baby food in it. We usually used a small tupperware type container to hold a meal if we went out somewhere and a meal may have to be served. We got very good at knowing where we had access to a microwave or asking the staff to "warm this up for us" and hand them the tupperware container. Worked like a charm. Many gas stations, convenience stores, even food courts all have a microwave to nuke frozen burritos and other awful things. Yup we used those too. Drive in warm up our food, and we'd find a spot for our daughter to eat. Often times that was the whole reason we went in but it worked for us. We never bought any commercial store brand baby food. Its a very do-able thing for anybody who has kids and they want them to eat better.

 

[GardeNerd]

When I had my kids, organic baby foods were just starting to show up on the market (that tells you how old I am) but organic baby foods were super expensive. Instead, I just did the ice cube method with whatever I grew or bought at farmer's market. I would cook and puree whatever was in season, then freeze in ice cube trays, like Me&thegals and Jared77 describes. With my second child, I didn't bother to put up near as much. I just used the burr mixer on whatever fruits or veggies we were eating that day for her. I would always set her portion aside before seasoning.