Homemade baby food

I've been wanting to write this post for awhile, but when you have a daughter who only naps for 30 minutes at a time......I think you get the idea ;) I know there are a bunch of my friends who are expecting or are about to start solid foods with their kiddos, so I wanted to write a blog and show how incredibly easy it is to make homemade baby food. I give full credit to this site: http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/. It is by FAR the best how-to on baby food out there. It tells which foods to feed at what ages, how to cook, prepare and store the foods, recipes, nutrition information and so much more. Bookmark it. You're welcome ;)

The reason I wanted to make Emily's food is because I wanted to know exactly what I was feeding her. Look on the label of a Gerber jar food next time you are in the store; there are a ton of ingredients that I couldn't even pronounce, so I doubt that was good for my sweet girl. I buy all organic (or as much of it as I can get in our non-organic friendly town). I also really just enjoy making it. I get to learn how to prepare the fruits and veggies that we normally don't have in the house (cauliflower, anyone?) Here is a step by step on how to make carrots. It is the exact same process for 90% of the other fruits and veggies....SO easy!

I bought a 1/2 lb bag of organic peeled baby carrots. Wash them and cut them into 1 inch chunks and put them in the double boiler. If you don't have a double boiler, a steam basket works perfectly, too. Steaming and baking them retains the most nutrients, so I always stick to those methods. Steam them until tender (about 15 minutes uncovered, 10 minutes covered).

Once steamed, scoop them out into your blender or food processor. I use the magic bullet, it's awesome. You do not need a fancy baby one (Baby Breeza or whatever), a blender is perfectly fine.

Puree until smooth. Now, if the puree is too thick, add some water. For most of the fruits and veggies, add the water from the steamer since the nutrients are in there. For carrots, nitrates form when steamed and you don't want those for the baby, so just add in fresh water as needed. Carrots are weird like that. Check how to make each food on the WBF website above.....I seriously check it every single time.

Scoop the puree into your preferred freezing container. These are called Fresh Baby So Easy Trays and I got them on Amazon. Each of these ice cubes is one ounce.

Put them in the freezer. When done, you can twist the tray to pop them out, or run some warm water on the back of the trays and they will pop right out. Stick them in a labeled freezer bag and you're done! They turn out SO colorful when you are working with fresh fruits and veggies.