Homemade baby food -- what to feed a lil' LTHer?

I'm considering making baby food for my 10-month-old. I already make dinner for my husband and me most nights -- how hard can it be to feed another mouth, even if he has only two teeth?

The kid has been a regular vacuum cleaner so far. Tofu, peas, bananas (natch), yogurt, yams, even foie gras -- he hasn't met a puree or a moosh he doesn't like, luckily.

So, I'm seeking inspiration and advice from the parents in the audience. Any recipes, tips and techniques that worked for you? Fruits and vegs that lend themselves particularly well to storing in the freezer? Any combos your lil' shaver was especially fond of?

I am not a parent myself, but I have a good friend with a kid that I am like an Uncle too. That little guy loves avocado. It's a really healthy food with the good fats that babies need.

However I'm guessing it doesn't freeze well.

Avocado, right on. It's a hit with my little guy, too.

(I wish we had a farmer's market here to match Madison's. That Saturday market of yours blows me away.)

I fed both my kids with homemade purees when they were babies.

Using chicken from chicken soup, you can add a bit of the stock, just puree the chicken in the processor, you can add carrots too. We'd freeze the "pate" in little ice cube trays, defrost/warm as needed. The beef wasn't quite as big a hit for some reason. We also occasionally put the stick blender into some minestrone (not from cans) and they got some beans and stuff as well.

My kids loved pureed sweet potatoes and squash, beets (watch the diaper a day later though LOL), even peas and green beans.

There used to be a frozen/organic baby food that came in the freezer, I bought some of those too, though they were expensive. I saved the little trays when I had them, recycled for the chicken etc.

man that was a LOOooong time ago. LOL

sassafrass wrote:I'm considering making baby food for my 10-month-old. I already make dinner for my husband and me most nights -- how hard can it be to feed another mouth, even if he has only two teeth?

I remember hearing that there were two vegetables to avoid ... but my mind is drawing a blank. There are a number of web resources on the subject.

Here is a website woth some helpful information:

http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/
http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/forbiddenbabyfood.htm
http://homecooking.about.com/od/specifi ... ddonts.htm

Excellent links, thanks. The articles on nitrate vegetables were especially helpful.

More info on homemade baby food here and here

For our 11 month old(almost 1 year) baby who now has 6 teeth, we suppliment her baby formula, and canned organic gerber foods with:

steak/beef cut up in small pieces
chicken
pork(ribs, pork chops)
sausage
crab
avocado
refried beans
rice
mashed potatoes
peas
cheerios
soup broth(cream based,chicken broth, gumbo, bean, etc)
pasta


and pretty much anything else she wants to try. We just let her taste & eat what we are eating.

We started our daughter pretty young on soups. Whatever we were having, we would share. If we went out to eat, we would order soup immediately on sitting. This gave her something to eat right away and got her used to alot of flavors. This works in most ethnic restaurants - Thai, Polish, Mexican, Italian, etc. It it's hot, I just add an ice cube.

At this point, she is 4 and while I won't say "She'll eat anything!" It's pretty close and she will still eat most soups.

sassafrass wrote:Avocado, right on. It's a hit with my little guy, too.

(I wish we had a farmer's market here to match Madison's. That Saturday market of yours blows me away.)

The farmers market is nice. Most weekends I skip the big one though, for one of the smaller ones that are on Sunday. It can just be so crowded on the square sometimes, and takes too long.

Hummus and/or pureed black beans, green beans, cauliflower, broccoli. quinoa, canteloupe, apple sauce also were a hit for our daughter. I pretty much pureed everything (except for the beans/hummus) and froze it in ice cube trays, then stored in freezer bags.
LO

For Thing1 we had a small food mill, and would grind up anything we were eating and never a baby food jar except for long trips... we were less ambitious with Thing2, I'm ashamed to say, but never did we buy any of the jarred meat products, they're just gross.

Beef and pork are harder to mince than, say, chicken or fish.
Mixing a veggie in with the meat can make both easier to eat: a little fat in the veggies, a little sweet from carrot or spinach in the meat. Spinach+tuna was one of Thing1's faves (spoonerfish, we called it).

Surprisingly, strong flavors are NOT an automatic rejection. At age 1, Thing1 put his hand into a bowl of salsa, slurped it, eyes widened and clawed his tongue... then went back for it again.

Kafein, your post reminds me of the NYTimes Dining story last week on picky eaters getting their pickyness from genetics. Which I don't entirely buy (lookit me, with all my expert experience -- 10 whole months).

www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/dining/10pic ... ref=slogin

All of these tips here seem to suggest you all are raising kids who will try anything. Which is great; it's what I aspire to.

Keep 'em coming...

I was referring more to the "will only eat chicken nugget and only the dinosaur shaped ones from Costco" contingent.

Personally, I think being expsed to a variety of smells and flavors throughout their lives, so that it's always "normal" makes a big difference. There are studies that show that nursing moms who eat a variety of flavors have less picky children, as the subtle flavors are passed through the breastmilk. (As opposed to formula, which always tastes the same.) It would seem this would pass on into the late baby/early toddlerhood.

One more thing if you are doing the homemade baby food thing. Introduce one or two foods per week so that you can identify any food allergies fairly quickly.

I made most of my kids baby food before they really caught on to the self-feeding concept because it was often cheaper than the prepackaged Gerber purees. I would bake all kinds of things for them in a large dutch oven (apples and root vegetables were probably the most popular) and then puree them up and freeze individual servings in ice cube trays for later use. A few other fresh fruits they really started to enjoy around the 10 month mark were kiwi, grapes (cut up in small pieces) blueberry, mango, and pear.

And don't forget there are still some foods you should be staying away from at this point, like nuts, especially if you have any family history of food allergies. The AAP is now recommending that kids not be given peanuts until the age of three, but I think tree nuts are usually ok after age one (again, barring any family history of nut allergies.)

Good luck!