Not only is making your own baby food better for baby, it is also considerably cheaper. I was given some baby food, so hadn't bought any until last week. I had lots of fun picking out different kinds and then realized that even on sale, the $10 worth of food that I bought was going to last about a week.
So instead of buying baby food at Safeway this weekend, I loaded up on some great produce. We also bought some at a local farm/fruit stand in Clatskanie. Here is a quick re-cap of what I made followed by pictures:
The first thing I made with my new blender was split peas with zucchini. I got the idea for the split peas from the cookbook that Debbie gave me called "The Everything Organic Cooking for Baby and Toddler Book". I cooked one cup of split peas on the stove, and steamed 2 small zucchini. The split peas came from the bulk bin from our local co-op and I am certain that one cup costs 50 cents or less. The zucchini was 50 cents because it was in the "less than perfect" bin - meaning that it had 2 small scrapes on the side. So I ended up with two ice cube trays of food! I freeze it, then pop it out and put it in ziplock freezer bags.
Later in the day I decided to just keep on cooking. So I made a sweet potato, and pureed that with some fresh kale and carrots. The sweet potato was from Safeway ($1) and the kale came Grandpa and Grandma's garden, and the carrots were from my garden! Again, I got one ice cub tray of food that I froze and then put in freezer bags.
This morning I noticed that we had some hash brown potato patties in the freezer that needed to be used. I think for the whole pack they were $2, but this pack had 3 left...so not really any money to me. I cooked them, and then steamed some cauliflower that I picked up at the farm stand for $1.50 and some more of my fresh carrots. I blended it together and at the last minuted added a couple of tablespoons of nutritional yeast. I get this yeast from our co-op and love the flavor. In my baby cookbook I found this blurb about it (I often have family and friends ask me what it is, and I have no answer except "AWESOME!" I love it on salads, roasted veggies, popcorn, and kale). "Nutritional Yeast is an inactive yeast that is grown on molasses. It is used as a flavoring agent and as a nutritional supplement as it proves protein and B vitamins. Some nutritional yeast is enriched with vitamin B12, a vitamin often lacking in the diets of vegetarians. Do not confuse this yeast with active yeast however!"
And finally I just finished my last baby food adventure of the weekend. I used a recipe from my new book for Quinoa and Peaches. I am new to quinoa but like the flavor and the cookbook has this to say about it "Quinoa has been grown in South America for more than 6,000 years. The incas revered quinoa as the "mother of all grains" due to its unique nutritional properties. It has a good amount of balanced protein and is high in fiber, phosphorous, magnesium and iron." I cooked the quinoa and put it in the Ninja with peach puree that I canned last summer and a fresh mango that was $1.00 at Safeway. It made almost a full tray of baby food and it cost just under $2 for the entire batch!
Please share with me your favorite food combos that you have made...or maybe a combo that you think Lucy would like?!?!
OK enough already...here are some pictures from our food adventures!
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| Pureed split peas and zucchini in my new Ninja! |
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| To the ice cube tray |
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| This thing is AWESOME. Get yourself one. Thank me later! |
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| Chopped fresh, yummy, dark green Italian kale. |
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| Finished product: sweet potato, kale, and carrot. |
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| Another finished product: potato, cauliflower, carrot and nutritional yeast. |
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| And finally, quinoa with peach and mango. |
