Homemade Baby Food to Save the World
My girls are addicted to baby food packets. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Those darn things are so convenient and easy. I now almost never use their highchairs because I can sit on the floor and just feed them straight from the lovely little bags of food. It makes life so much easier and there is much less food on the floor. (To be fair, I end up with so much more food all over me. I feel like I change my clothes for the day and within two minutes one of them has rubbed more pumpkin on my legs and shirt than they have in their mouths!) But despite all these pluses, I have a very hard time using them. And always have. When both boys are exploring food for the first time, we utilized a strategy called “Baby Lead Weaning”. BLW is a strategy that espouses instead of giving babies purees and cereals, one just gives their little ones the food that they are eating. Now, that is within reason. When you begin this process, it is banana and avocados, things that babies can easily mash between their gums. But as they get more comfortable with textures, and skilled in their ability to masticate solid food, one can give them more and more freedom with feeding themselves. It can be a bit of a nerve-wracking process in the learning. There is a fair amount of gagging and coughing pieces of food up but, if they are making noise and not actually turning blue, they will work through it. Of course, I have always been there with all our kiddos just in case, but we have never had any serious incidents with the process. I attribute the fact that our boys have been willing to try virtually any food stuff at very young ages to this technique and have always loved it.
With the girls, they have always had tummy troubles. Ellie was a massive spitter when she was little, to the degree that we were quite worried about her not getting enough nutrition. Belles struggled so much with constipation when formula was introduced into her diet. And then bringing food into the picture, my poor girls are intermittently having quite the trouble. They turn bright red and strain so hard, they look like they are just going to pop. It is quite the heartbreaking sight. I hate that my sweet girls are struggling hence, prunes. Now prunes aren’t just for old people. They work wonders for my babies. Every time either one of them turned into bright little tomato faces, we knew it was time to get some of those magic fruits into their bodies. The best and most convenient way was the forbidden packets of blended fruit. Slowly, packets made their way into the twins’ daily life. Oh boy, did they love them. Belles is the eater of the two and every time I bring one out the squeals of joy are so exuberant, it is hard not to give her anything and everything she wants. Food. Food is so much of what she wants. And pureed food at that.
When we lived in Napa, before the pandemic hit and we brought ourselves to Montana, we were really doing well reducing our waste products. We had stopped having one use products in the house and the ones that we did, I found ways to reuse until they literally fell apart. I was going to the farmer’s market every weekend so my produces was not only local but plastic free. I made bread in my bread maker or at the aforementioned market. Our takeout consumption was reduced to almost nothing. I was thrilled to be able to call the waste management company and downgrade our trash can to the “small” can. I really felt like I was proactively working to be sustainable and every measure that I took to make our lives more green was a win. But now…oh my, if we miss garbage day, it is the end. To be fair we now have more than twice as many diapers going into our trash (Just throwing it out there, I had fully intended to do cloth diapers with the third baby and then it was twins. And I can barely keep up with the normal laundry. I’ll get them all potty-trained ASAP.) and I don’t have the time to do all the home-made things I was doing before but, still, the guilt I have over our waste output is not not significant. Anything and everything that I throw in the trash these days, I over analyze as to what I could have done to prevent the use of it. The baby food packets were no different. The only answer to this problem was I now needed to make my own baby food purees.
“How did I do this,” you ask.
“Well, I of course, winged it,” I reply, laughing.
I looked up recipes and ideas on the great guru that is Pinterest, but then decided for my first try at this I was just going to make combinations of things in my fridge. If it worked out, then I could seek out the most nutritious combinations of veggies, and fruits, and flax, and whatever else all these recipes called for. I had a huge Costco bag of carrots and that is where I started. After scouring the food available, I ended up with carrots, dried pears and cherries, blueberries, spinach, and supplemental applesauce. Thinking about these ingredients post pureeing flurry, I definitely would have skipped the dried fruit. I actually chose it because it had been sitting in my pantry with the intent of the boys eating it but in true Buck boys fashion, they had eaten about two pieces and then abandoned it for greener pastures. To be fair, there was nothing wrong with it as a food, it was just super gummy and made my packets pretty thick. Also, very sweet, as is the tendency for dried fruit. Still, the combinations that I decided on, carrot/apple/pear and spinach/blueberry/cherry, turned out to be hits with the girls, despite my misgivings.
The actual process was extremely straightforward. Everyone reading this could probably figure it out in their sleep with no help from me. But, just in case you don’t want to figure it out, or just really want to see my very “professional” photos, here is my process:
Choose produce that you think your baby will love. (Or that you have too much of and want to use before it goes bad. Lols)
Wash and prepare said produce i.e., peel carrots if that floats your boat.
Depending on the fruit and veggies you chose, cook them to a smashable texture. In my case, I boiled the carrots, and dried fruit. The carrots I knew would work but I was trying to figure out how to make the dried fruit soft enough to make purees from. I put them in pots of water and let them boil until they were soft enough. You don’t really need a specific time or temp, just keep it all going until it was all soft. With the spinach, I just steamed it for about 4 minutes and let it sit in the pot until I was ready to use it. It was pretty well mushy by that time and blended well. Also, be sure to save some of the boiling water to add if your purees are too thick.
Once your fruit and veggies are soft, using a food processor (or I suppose you could use a blender too) blend until the chosen produce is a smooth texture. For my first combination, the carrot/pear/apple, I did each ingredient separately and then added them back together in the food processor to combine them. With the spinach/cherry/blueberry I threw them all into the food processor to begin with. Both ways worked equally as well. I used the applesauce in the first flavor and the water the dried cherries had been boiling in to loosen the consistency until it was the perfect texture.
There are plenty of retailers now that sell the reusable packet bags. I purchased mine from Simple Modern and they are great. They are thick, relatively easy to fill, freezable, with a great capacity. And they have Disney ones! Once I got the purees to the consistency that I wanted, I carefully filled the packets, paying attention to the fill line so, I could freeze the extras.
And that was it! I made about 20 full packets, froze two thirds of them, and the twins went through them in about a week and half. My girls loved them!
I have to say it was quite the success. My girls were well filled, and my conscious was clean because I wasn’t throwing away five plastic packets a day. Wins on all fronts, now I just have to find the time to do it again!
