A homemade baby food dork, that’s what!
Today I was browsing some baby message boards on ivillage and came across a few posts that talked about making homemade babyfood. I’d heard of people doing it before, but never gave it a second thought. Well, for some reason today I decided to read up on it a little. And it is SO much cheaper to make your own baby food, and not hard at all (although a little messy). Here is a great website to get information and recipes about making your own babyfood… Wholesome Babyfood
Ryan and I are really, really picky eaters. I want Porter to be exposed to a lot of different foods, and to learn to love many different varieties. I really want him to love fruits and veggies, and be a healthy eater, which Ryan and I are NOT good examples of. I think when he’s a little bigger we’re going to have to really set a better example. I’d hate for Porter to think that munching on chips, sweets and pop daily is a good thing. Uh, nope. Anyway, thats my main motivation for making these foods. I can puree any veggie or fruit for him… there is so much more out there than what is available in jarred foods. And if I’m going to puree those "exotic" fruits and veggies… why not all of them?
Another reason I wanted to try this because of the money it’d save us. Yeah, it’d be time consuming one day out of the month (you can freeze babyfood for up to a month… so once I figure out how much will last him a month, I’ll make a huge batch one day and be all set), but when you figure that store bought babyfood costs about 25cents an ounce and homemade babyfood costs around 5cents an ounce… thats a big percentage of savings. I figure it could cost us around $110/month to feed Porter just jar foods (assuming he eats six 2.5oz jars a day… but right now he’s eating about 3-4). If I make his food… the cost is around $25. Thats a big savings… So, I’m going to try it.
Soooo…. my big plan of the day was to grocery shop (it’d been almost a month… I looked back on my posts… the last big grocery shopping was done JULY 19th! Uhm… yeah.) and to make up a big batch of baby food and freeze it.
Some of the foods I’m going to still buy… like applesauce. Did you know you can just buy the "regular" big people applesauce for infants, as long as it is natural applesauce and the only ingredients are apples and water?
1 big jar: $1.42. Cost per ounce: 5cents
I’m also going to still buy carrots premade… theres some worry out there about the nitrates that get into the water when you steam carrots at home, I’m not sure what the big deal is but I figure whatever… I’ll just keep buying the jars so I don’t have to worry if I’m feeding my kid some toxins.
And the meats and all that jazz… I’m not that gung ho to puree all that kind of stuff up into little mini dinners. He can eat that stuff jarred.
Mainly, I’m going to stick to fruits and veggies. Let me give you the specs on my "research" today.
The process is simple. Steam your veggies and fruits, put them in the blender using the excess water to thin it out, and load up a bunch of ice cube trays (which each cube is approximately 1ounce), cover with plastic and freeze. Once they’re frozen, pop the food cubes into freezer baggies, and each day just take out the cubes for feeding that day and put them in the fridge to thaw. We bought some GladWare little 4oz containers to put the cubes in the fridge to thaw them.
Anyway…. here’s what I made today.
AVOCADO
1 Avocoado made 6oz of food. At $1.17, it cost approximately 19cents per ounce. Not huge savings, but I want Porter to be exposed to this fruit. Yes, its a fruit… did you know that?
BROCCOLI
I used one clump of broccoli (a little over half a pound) and it made 9oz of food. At $1.04 for the clump it was about 11cents per ounce.
PLUMS
These were SUPER easy to make. The skin peels right off, it blends sooo easy too!
5 plums made 18 ounces of food. At 98cents (for the 5 plums) it was a total of 5cents per ounce
PEACHES
3 large peaches made 30 (YES!) ounces of food. At $1.40, it was about 4cents per ounce!!
BANANAS
3 bananas made 18oz of food. At 67cents for the 3 bananas it came out to 3cents per ounce!
EGGPLANT
1 eggplant made about 17oz of food. At $1.86 it came out to about 11cents per ounce
POTATOES (redskin)
Not sure the cost…we bought a huge bag, probably was a couple bucks, and I only used 4 potatoes and those 4 potatoes made 24oz of food. It could easily have made much more, I should have thinned it out more… but I’ll just add formula once I thaw some cubes. And maybe add some carrots or peas…
I figure we spent about $5 on the fresh fruits and veggies and got (so far) 87oz of babyfood. YAY!
Anyway… I have a whole list of fruits and veggies I’m dying to mix up. Ok well, thats my inspiring news for the day. Here are a few pics… this is the avocado… it looks like I went nuts with green today, huh? (the ice cube trays… super cheap at WalMart… 87cents for 4 trays)
nicolebarczak.com 
you crack me up! My SIL does this for my nieces. It’s so much healthier and cheeper. She never bought any jared food… I don’t remember what she did for meat. go girl!!
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Dude, you’re a trip!! The only time I got like this was when I was pregnant with my second child and trying to think of shortcuts to save time and money once the new baby arrived. LOL!! Looks like you’re way ahead of the game!! Kudos!!
when you do buy the jarred food (for carrots and meat or for on the go away from home and stuff) if you get the plastic containers -I think the meats only come in jars- it’s super convenient to wash those out real quick and save those. Then you could freeze your cubes in there and those would become easier to take to a restaurant or mom’s house or whatever. They also come in really handy for cheerios, cheese cubes or crackers and what have you when he starts snacking!
Love the photos…lol.
I want updates on this so I can decide to give it a go with Hailey or not! 🙂
My good friend Lottie did this with her son and she said she saved a LOT of money! The only thing she didnt’ do was string beans because she didn’t want to de-string them. Congrats on becoming Suzy-babyfood-maker! 🙂 Love the pics!!!
Sounds healthier and cheaper for sure!! Now lets just hope Porter will eat all that good-for-you stuff!
Hey I just was linked to this from your post from tonite and I love it! I also experimented with freezing homemade babyfood in the ice cube trays! It actually worked pretty good for awile, especially on the go or when he had to go to Erika’s house when she watched him. I would just pop a cube in of a fruit and veggie into seperate containers and then she could serve it to him for the meals later on. I’m glad to know someone else that did this!