Apr 09 2009
Homemade Baby Food
How to Make your Own Baby Food
A group of French Scientists discovered that babies who were exposed to pesticides in utero doubled their chances for leukemia. Obviously, we want to limit our children’s exposure to pesticides as much as possible. One way to do this is to make your own baby food with organic fruits and veggies. And if you can’t find organic, you can at least choose from fresh fruits and vegetables and scrub them thoroughly. Not only will this be healthier for your baby, but tastier too. After all, have you tried those jarred foods? Yech!
First, choose which veggies and fruits you want to cook. Again, try to get organic – but if you can’t, then scrub your food thoroughly with soap and water. Vegetables like squash, sweet potatoes and carrots work very well for homemade baby food. For the fruits, try peaches, pears and apples. Cut both kinds into nice steamable pieces. Place water in your steamer and add the veggies and fruit. Steaming them together speeds up the process and gives you more time with your baby.
Store the food in the freezer in pre-purchased containers, cleaned baby food jars or ice cube trays. Only freeze small portions and thaw only what you need. Place your newer batches behind the old. These homemade baby foods can be frozen for up to three months. To thaw, place in the refrigerator overnight or place in hot water. These can also be placed in a diaper bag and used once they have thawed over the course of a few hours. Do not microwave baby food.
Once you have seen how beautifully rich in color these homemade baby foods are, you will never want to use store bought again!
Rather than freezing, it is better to refrigerate as it is less subject to nutritional degradation (unless one has access to liquid nitrogen for rapid freezing). Although subject to waste (baby food only lasts about a week in the fridge – it’s better to be safe and discard rather than risk food poisoning). Ideally, if time were unlimited, food would be made fresh every time, however, this is not the case for most parents.
Freezing is a great way to preserve the nutritional value, make sure it is in a deep freeze and in safe containers, glass or bpa, phalate free plastic containers. A lot of the time if you are freezing garden veggies, they will likely have more nutritional value than something that is sold as fresh in the supermarket that came from another country since they are picked early so that they ripen in transit. In the winter often if you buy frozen veggies they will have more nutritional value than the fresh. It something to think about.