We all know home cooked meals made from scratch are the best, right? They are healthier, cheaper, and taste better. Same holds true for your little munchkins – no, especially for little ones! Homemade baby food is not hard to make and it is definitely much, much cheaper.
On the left is $7.50 worth of store bought baby food. On the right $7.00 worth of homemade baby food. In both photos there are carrots, mangoes, blueberry applesauce, green beans, and peas.
Each baggie holds the equivalent of 8 baby food jars or $24 dollars for all six bags if I had bought the same amount of food in jars. That’s a savings of about $17. Quite a difference!
Just like a good home cooked meal, it does take some time to make baby food. If you plan ahead you can usually make something while you are cooking dinner for your family. I usually just carve out some time on a Saturday to make several batches. Here’s what I did last Saturday. I first peeled a 2 pound bag of carrots, sliced them and put them on the stove to steam. While they were steaming I peeled and sliced apples and put them in a pot to boil with blueberries for blueberry applesauce. While both the apples and carrots were cooking I peeled three mangoes, cut them up into chunks, and pureed them in my food processor. The mango puree was placed in ice cube trays. By then the apples were soft. I took them off the heat to cool before pureeing and placing it in ice cube trays. As you can guess, the carrots were done steaming by this time and I pureed them after they cooled. It took about 40 minutes from start to finish to create enough carrots, mangoes, and blueberry applesauce to last little Hershey for at least three weeks.
When making homemade baby food do not add any sugar or salt. It may taste bland to us but to babies who have only ever had milk the natural goodness of fruit and vegetables is a treat.
I typically start my babies on food at about 7 months. I like to nurse them exclusively for as long as possible. I introduce a new food twice a week. I usually start with rice or oatmeal cereal (which I do buy) and then progress through the colors of the rainbow. White (applesauce, pears, bananas), yellow/orange (peaches, yams, butternut squash, mangoes), green (peas, green beans), purple (blueberries, plums), brown (meat – chicken, pork, beef).
One of the very best websites I’ve found for homemade baby food ideas is NurtureBaby. You can browse the recipes by age or food groups. The photography is also very appealing. 😀
Have you ever made your own baby food? Did you realize there was such a savings involved?
All 3 of my boys have been fed almost totally exclusivly homemade food. I also froze it into ice cubes and when they reached the 3 or more cube state started feeding them from the table! 🙂
I agree, not only do you save money, you save your baby from eating alot of processed things that do not occure naturally.
I never bought a single jar of baby food for either of my children. I did feed them unsweetened applesauce from jars (which they still eat), as well as store-bought yogurt and rice cereal. But all the fruits & veg & meat went through my food mill.
In case you are looking for new ideas: Corn on the cob is especially sweet and delicious if you run it through a food mill, since the mill’s mesh keeps back the difficult-to-chew outer layer of the kernels (unlike the food processor). Pureed cucumber tastes wonderful stirred into plain yogurt. For older babies, we often mixed the veg purees into cooked rice or barley for added texture.
This post brings back such memories…
No way 17 dollars?! I had no idea!
I am so very proud to say I have never bought store-bought baby food for my little girl. She’s almost a year old and the only thing I’ve ever bought for her from the babyfood isle is the cereal in a box. Other than that all she’s eaten has been homemade and that makes me feel so wonderful inside. 🙂 It really is so easy and so so so much cheaper than buying those little jars (although those jars are cute). My favorite puree is butternut squash. It comes out such a pretty orange color and is so smooth and creamy. I even like eating it with my little one.
Once we babysat another little one around her age and needed to feed him his dinner. It was so strange feeding him that viscous stuff from the packages that didn’t even look like what the label said it was
Well, I am feeling quite guilty, thanks Cocoa 🙂 I have used jarred foods for ours. I usually worked part time out of the home and, truly, Gerber does such a nice job of packing just the veggie, with no additives. (I’ve never used the meat in a jar foods..gross!) Now that I am home, I am doing more of the cooking for our littlest. I moved her quickly through the pureed food and into texture to make my life a little easier. She’s happy and the steamed carrot bits are so simple. Still haven’t found a good way to prep a green bean for her. They just look and smell bad.
I have made my own baby food, for my second child. He seemed to like it better than store-bought food. Most of the time I just pureed deconstructed parts of our adult meal. If our meal was spaghetti, I would puree noodles, tomatoes, carrots, etc together. First foods are easier to prepare!
I made my own baby food with my second child. it was quite a savings and I actually enjoyed making it myself knowing that I was giving her the best nutrition I could. If we have more children, homemade baby food will definetly be on the menu!
I’ve made most of my daughter’s baby food. I knew it saved me money, but didn’t realize how much until this last week. We are going on a trip so I bought enough babyfood to get us through the week. Even using coupons and sales, it is much more than I would spend on produce to make the same things, especially since so many fruits and veggies are in season right now. I never add sugar or salt, but now that my daughter is a little older, I like adding herbs and spices to her food to make it more interesting. Like fresh basil and thyme with her zucchini or a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg with her summer squash. I’m hoping this will make her more of an adventurous eater when she is older 🙂
I do think that babyfood makers are much better about only using fruits and veggies nowadays, but I was dissapointed in the limited selection. There are very few green veggies (I don’t think they store well) and very few if any whole grain options so I have enjoyed preparing food at home so that 1) I know she is getting a good variety of fresh fruits and veggies and 2) she is becoming accustomed to the types of food and flavors that our family eats so that as we transition her to table food, it won’t be much of an adjustment.