As you’re probably already aware, we started Prim on solids when she turned 6 months, just over a month ago. She (luckily) took to it right away, and we’re now feeding her three meals a day, most days.
Aside from the Straus Organic Plain Greek Yogurt that I feed her some mornings (which she loooooves), I’ve made all of the food that she’s eaten up to this point. I’m sure that she will be eating more non-homemade foods sometime in the near future, but for now it’s been easy to make her food myself, and I like knowing the components of what I’m actually putting into that little tiny body of hers.
Almost everything I make for Prim is either cooked, boiled or steamed on the stovetop and then blended with a hand blender. I’ve owned my hand blender for a long time now (I usually use it to make soups), but if you don’t own one already, I can’t recommend this gadget enough if you’re planning to make your own baby food — it makes it so easy!
Everything I cook for Prim is organic, just because that’s how I prefer to eat and I like to know that she’s ingesting as few hormones and pesticides as possible. For the first few weeks I fed Prim only one new food item every day or two, to make sure she didn’t have any reactions, and didn’t season the food at all. Now that she’s been eating for a little while now though, I cook her food occasionally in some organic low-sodium chicken stock, and also season her food liberally with salt, pepper, or a tiny dab of butter (not to the extent I’d season mine or KC’s, just enough to add a little bit of flavor).
If you’re a parent, or parent-to-be, and are thinking about making your own baby food, here’s a brief list of some of the things I’ve made for Prim so far:
- Steel cut oatmeal
- cooked with extra water, then blended
- Zucchini
- boiled in a small amount of water, then blended
- Zucchini + spinach
- boil zucchini in a little bit of water until transparent, then stir in spinach leaves, then blend all together
- Pears
- peeled and steamed, then blended
- Sweet potatoes
- boiled, then strained and blended with a little cooking water
- Peas
- boiled, then strained and blended with a little cooking water
- Potato Leek Soup
- I made this recipe for dinner one night, and just pulled some aside before adding the half and half and the final seasoning of salt and pepper
- Red Lentils + Leeks + Carrots in chicken stock
- red lentils cooked according to package instructions, sautée the leeks in a tiny bit of butter, and boil the carrots in a little chicken stock before blending it all together
- Carrots + Quinoa cooked in chicken stock
- quinoa cooked in chicken stock according to package directions and carrots boiled in chicken stock until soft. Blend the carrots first with a little of the cooking stock and then stir in the quinoa. I serve this with the tiniest dab of butter on top.
- Broccoli + Quinoa cooked in chicken stock
- steam the broccoli (I actually just threw it over the pot of carrots I was cooking) until soft, then blend it with a bit of water or stock (I used a little of the chicken stock I cooked the carrots in), then stir in the quinoa. I serve this with the tiniest dab of butter on top.
Other easy options Prim has had that didn’t require cooking: mashed bananas and mashed avocado. And next on my list: cooked apples with a touch of cinnamon (Prim isn’t really into fruit yet, so I’m trying out different things to see if she changes her mind!)
I use these trays to freeze food I’ve cooked for Prim. I pop out the cubes once they’re frozen and put them into a labeled Ziploc in the freezer. When I’m ready to feed her a meal, I just pop a cube or two into the microwave for 30 seconds to a minute, and it’s ready to go! Easy peasy.
And just because I did a sort of insane amount of research into which baby spoons to buy, these are my favorite by far.