Baby Food Making Gear

If you ask any parent about what tools they use to make and store their baby food, you'll get some differing opinions about what works best. When I started making baby food, I did some research about the different products that people used, and I chose products that I thought were quality products, but also a good value for the money. After all, one of the many reasons I wanted to make Ella's baby food in the first place was to save money and it wouldn't make sense to spend a ton of money on equipment.

Here I've listed the products that I use to make and store my baby food.


Black & Decker Food Processor You'll need something in order to blend the baby food. I chose a food processor over a blender (although some recommend a blender) because my blender just wouldn't be able to get the smooth consistency I wanted (especially for when Ella was younger). I've put this food processor to the test, and I've been very pleased with its performance.


Oxo Good Grips Ice Cube Tray I didn't buy the ice cube trays with covers (I just covered them with foil when I froze the baby food), but I think these covers would be very handy. I had a total of three ice cube trays, which worked well for the way I made my food. I usually only made one fruit or veggie every few days. If you are more of the type to take an evening and make several fruits and veggies at one time, you'll need more than three trays.

Rubbermaid Easy Find Lid Square 1/2-Cup Food Storage Container These containers are great for feeding/storing/bringing baby food along in.


Playtex Fridge-To-Go Bottle Holder Even though this cooler is specifically for bottles, I like to use it to carry my homemade baby food around if we are out and about.

Glad Press'n Seal I use this to store my baby finger foods (more posts on this coming down the road!). This stuff is great (for many uses besides baby finger food storage).


Hefty One Zip Gallon Freezer BagsYou'll need some way to store the frozen baby food cubes. I like these freezer bags because they are easy to get in and out of - and sometimes I only had one hand to work with. :)



Rachael Ray 5-Quart Pan and Pyrex Bakeware Ok, so you don't need these exact items, but I used both of these items to cook my fruits and veggies. The Rachael Ray pan is one of my favorite pans to cook anything in!

A New Button for My Blog

I finally learned how to make a button for my blog (thanks to this site). What do you think?

Broccoli and Cauliflower

I'm grouping these together because they were both bought and prepped similarly. I prepped both the broccoli and cauliflower from frozen rather than fresh. I like the flexibility that buying frozen provides, because I'm not under a time limit to make them immediately. In both cases, I boiled the veggies, and cooked them a little longer than I would if I were eating them so that they would be extra tender and blend more easily. I had no issues blending them in the food processor, but they did need to be blended a bit longer than some of the other produce because of their texture. The cauliflower and broccoli both froze well, and Ella like both of them.

When I was blending the cauliflower in the food processor, I thought it looked amazingly like mashed potatoes. Not long after I made the cauliflower I was watching The Biggest Loser and they suggested replacing mashed potatoes with cauliflower. I might just have to try it! :)

Pumpkin

During the month of September I checked the grocery store every time I went looking for a pumpkin to make pumpkin baby food for Ella. Pumpkin season fell perfectly for me to make pumpkin as a baby food for her. As the beginning of October rolled around, the pumpkins appeared in the stores. I grabbed one up the first time I saw them. As usual, I read about how to make the pumpkin on www.wholesomebabyfood.com. I did, however, buy my pumpkin prior to reading on the website. The website recommends buying a smaller pumpkin, sometimes called a sugar or pie pumpkin. Although I bought the wrong type of pumpkin, I plowed ahead.

I figured that the pumpkin would be cooked similarly to the butternut sqaush - and I was right. After removing the seeds and strings, place the pieces fleshside down in a little water in a baking dish, and bake at 400° until the skin puckers up. Sounds pretty simple, right? Well, it might have been simple if I had the proper knife for breaking down a full size pumpkin, but I don't. It took me quite a while to get all the pieces cut apart, and separated into several different dishes (I think I had to use 4 different baking dishes to get all the pieces in the oven at the same time). Even though it was difficult to break the pumpkin down, the result was definitely worth it. Once baked, the pumpkin flesh is easily removed from the pumpkin skin. I pureed most of the pumpkin, and froze it in the ice cube trays. What I didn't puree, I cut into small dices for Ella to eat as finger food once she got a little older. I froze small servings of the pumpkin dices in packages I made with Glad Press 'n Seal.

The two best parts of making the pumpkin:

1. Ella loved it.
2. I got to roast fresh pumpkin seeds for myself. I LOVE fresh pumpkin seeds roasted with some butter and salt . . . yum :)

A Harder Test: Cherries

Over the past few week we traveled quite extensively, and I didn't want to go to all the trouble of bringing my homemade food along for our trip, so I purchased some Gerber stage two packages for Ella. Stage two foods are so much more interesting than the stage one, mostly because many are combos of different foods. One package I picked up was a cherry applesauce. Ella LOVED this combo, so when we got back, I decided I would make a cherry puree for her.

I read up on how to do the cherries on www.wholesomebabyfood.com, but things didn't quite work the way they were described on the website. First, I had to remove the pits from the cherries . . . according the website, I could depit the cherries by using the end of my vegetable peeler. So, I'm standing by the stove "removing the pit" from my cherries. Or, so I thought. (Did I mention that I'm pretty unfamiliar with cherries??) My husband walks by, and says, "You know you aren't taking the pit out, right?" I'm not?? What do you mean I'm not taking the pit out? My husband breaks open a cherry and shows me the pit. I'm most definitely not removing the pit with my vegetable peeler. I try to dig deeper with my vegetable peeler, but it really isn't working well. I decide I'll cut around the pit with a knife. This is really not working well either - sure, I'm removing the pit, but I'm also wasting a good bit of cherry in the process. My husband starts breaking the cherries open with his hands, which works, but is an incredibly messy process. I dig in again with the vegetable peeler, and I finally figure out I can get the pit out with the tip of my vegetable peeler, but this is also a very messy process. By the time I've depitted all of the cherries, my hands and clothes are stained purple (thankfully, I was wearing old clothes, and it washed off my hands easily).

Whew! I finally got the cherries depitted. That was A LOT of work . . . the most work of any food I've made Ella so far. Now I'm off to stew my cherries in a bit of water (which www.wholesomebabyfood.com suggested as a possible method) before I freeze them. After I stew them for a bit, I blend them up in my food processor, and they are SO liquidy. Apparently the cherries had enough juice in them, and I did not need to add water when I cooked them a bit. My mixture is so liquidy that I decided to reduce the mixture on the stove. After reducing for a while, it is much thicker, and much more appropriate for baby food. Finally, I move the puree into ice cubes to freeze. I was worried about the puree after everything that I had to do with it, but Ella loved it, so I guess that's all that matters!

Other Tests:Carrots, Sweet Potatoes, and Peas

Nothing much to report on these foods. I made them all according to the suggestions on www.wholesomebabyfood.com, and everything turned out just fine. Honestly, making the baby food has really become a fun, easy process.

Bananas and Avocados

Two fruits that do not need to be cooked are bananas and avocados. Both of these fruits may simply be mashed with a little water, breastmilk, or formula (or with nothing at all for older children). Ella LOVED the banana despite the fact that I HATE banana (I can't even stand the smell, so it is a big step for me to feed it to her). She kind of liked the avocado, so we'll keep trying that one. Perhaps I'll mix the banana and avocado together next time (as suggested on www.wholesomebabyfood.com).

The one thing I don't like about the banana is that I feel like I'm wasting quite a bit. Ella doesn't come close to eating a whole banana (even within the day) and I don't like them. If my husband is around he'll eat them, but if not it goes to waste. This isn't an issue with the avocado, because unlike bananas, avocados are one of my favorites (what can I say, I live in Texas and LOVE guacamole!). The wholesome baby food website suggests freezing the avocado in slices, but I haven't tried that yet.