Cooking for Baby

Boy, oh boy, are we learning a lot as we go! My approach to feeding Olivia food has slowly changed overtime. Originally, I wanted to try the Baby Led weaning approach which is basically giving your baby table food to 100% feed themselves. Waiting till 6 months means you can skip the rice cereal and just start with foods. It also theorizes that if you allow babies to feed themself they will stop when they are full, versus possibly continuing to eat more if they were spoon-fed.


We started by offering Olivia avocados, banana, and sweet potato wedges. She loved playing with her food, but did very little eating, which was fine because she was just 6 months at the time. She was not sure about the texture or taste of most of the foods that we offered her. She usually made a face as though we were trying to poison her.

Slowly, she got better at feeding herself and figuring out that the food was meant to be eaten. That's when dinners started to get a little more stressful. Olivia still does not have any teeth so she would gum off way more than she could manage and gag; one of us was always on guard fearing she would choke.

So I decided to try some of the puree recipes from this book that my mother-in-law gave to us.

I have really enjoyed doing the puree food feedings.  I feel really good about making her food from fresh fruits and veggies, and dinners have become fun, again!

It's really easy, too. Wash and clean the fruit or vegetable. Then steam, broil or bake it, and throw it in the food processor. Let it cool and then you can serve if fresh or freeze in ice cube trays as pictured above!

In addition to being easy, it's also MUCH cheaper than the jarred variation. I was pricing some of the jarred food, and wow. Anywhere from 64 cents to upwards of a buck for one jar of food, which can be 2-4 ounces or so. One head of broccoli was 1.89 at HEB and it made about 16 ounces of puree. So making the food is definitely cost effective.


 

So far I have made broccoli, mango, bananas, butternut squash, cauliflower, and apple.  Surprisingly, Olivia loved broccoli.  She has yet to try the cauliflower, but I'm hoping she likes it, too.  Those are my two favorite vegetables, and Dave's least favorite. 

Oh, and Josie Wails is with us for the week while Annette and Reese go off to Santa Fe to celebrate their 38th Wedding Anniversary.  She is an awesome pup.