Gotta eat!!

When Daniel and I found out we were pregnant we discussed how we wanted to feed our little one!! Yes we might be strange, but we wanted to teach Caleb early on how to have a healthy lifestyle. We discussed breastfeeding and I was determined to give it all I had! Well now that we have done that successfully for almost 6 months, it's time to talk about FOOD. We decided that fresh veggies would come in season about the time that he would start solids so we set a goal to make our own baby food. 

Our pediatrician encouraged us to start feeding Caleb rice cereal with breast milk at 4 months old. We started and he quickly began to master the spoon concept. For those of you that have been around lil man you already know he looooves to eat! If we eat he wants to join in. Therefore we decided at 5 months to get serious about baby food. My mother in law had purchased us a baby bullet and we had already decided we wanted to make all of Caleb's baby food. 

Daniel and his mom spent hours preparing a garden and it was starting to produce veggies around the time we decided to start food. Therefore I got out my baby bullet recipe book and started reading. 

When you are new at something it seems like it takes a while to get in the "groove". My first efforts were tiring. I followed the recipe book and prepared one veggie at a time and then filled up my Ice cube trays---stole this idea from my dear friend. And it seemed to be taking forever! I started thinking there must be a faster way to prepare a large quantity of baby food.

That's when it occurred to me that we had a large two tiered steamer in our cabinets that was covered in 4 years of dust--- yes Daniel and I used to be super heathy and would prepare completely steamed meals(chicken or fish and veggies). Well obviously we have gotten away from that and our steamer was just collecting dust. 

The day I pulled it out we had several pieces of zucchini and squash from the garden and I had purchased 5 sweet potatoes. I cleaned the veggies and cut them up and threw them all in the steamer. 20 minutes later the veggies were ready to blend. Then I made anotherdevision to use our full sized blender instead of the very miniature "bullet". This saved sooo much time and I feel like my veggies were smoother in the blender. 

*** I think the bullet is great for preparing small quantities of baby food but I was ready to make a lot and fill the freezer. ***

After all the food was prepared I filled ice cube trays and put them in the freezer.

A few hours later I popped the food out and put each type of food in galloon size baggies. 

Now when it's time to eat all I have to do is get out 2 cubes of baby food and thaw them out. It's just as easy as store bought food and I have the luxury of knowing what is inside each meal he eats!

So far Caleb has eaten zucchini, squash, green beans, sweet potatoes, bananas, avocado, and apples.