Homemade babyfood

So, what is the first babystep we unknowingly made?  Babyfood!

Shortly after Kai was born, Lee and I had a conversation about feeding Kai as healthy as possible.  Something about jars of water-logged peas and bananas lost its appeal.  I don't remember where I read it, but I came across the idea of making sweet potatoes as a first babyfood.  There's just not much easier than boiling, steaming, baking, microwaving sweet potatoes.  One of our favorite dishes is sweet potatoe souffle.  In fact, it's a staple of every special dinner, occasion, or holiday, and if you turn your nose up at it we give you a very funny look.  Of course, it's not exactly the Maker's Diet recipe yet ;)

Well, I started reading more and more and how easy it was to make babyfood.  All you do it cook the fruit or vegetable and ten puree it.  It freezes for a month or so, and you almost always save money over the water logged peas.  Of course, I did try to make pees, and that didn't go over so well.  I didn't make a lot of fruit because it wasn't really in season at the time, but we made the stew out of potatoes and 3 different kids of squash.  With Caitlin I've already made avacado and banana in addition to sweet potatoes and squash.

So this kind of gets to how to buy food.  It's not always possible or feasible to buy organic.  For us, we still felt better about making our own babyfood vs. buying babyfood with the first ingredient as water.  I buy organic fruit as much as possible due to pesticide (more later), but I've also learned that buying frozen food is a good option.  Not as good as organic, but frozen food is often picked at the peak of freshness without as much time for the pesticide to soak in as it ripens.  Much better than canned, salted, soggy vegetables.  The biggest difference between organic is that it retains a lot more of the nutrients, and you don't have to worry about hybrid, genetically modified, half green produce.

Yay for homemade babyfood!  Two must have resources are wholesomebabyfood.com and Super Baby Foods book.  They both provide excellent information about fruit, vegetables, and food in general.  I used Super Baby Food as a reference for yogurt, bread, and lots of meal ideas.  It makes babyfood almost more simple than buying tons of jars of babyfood and wondering how much water is added and just exactly how they made it so "smooth."