Baby Food

When my twins were just starting solids I made quite a bit of their baby food.  It was relatively easy and very affordable in the long run.  You do not need fancy equipment to make your own baby food.  You can use what you have already.  I mainly used my steamer and if you are looking for a great steamer I love my Richard Simmons Steamer.  It has three compartments so it can steam quite a bit of food at one time and eachone is seperate so the food does not taste like the other food you are also steaming.  I loved having a bigger steamer because I would do big batches at one time and freeze it so I always had some. 

I also used my Cuisinart Mini Food Processor to puree all the steamed fruits and veggies.  I stored the baby food in Baby Cubes which you can also purchase on Amazon.  You can also use regular ice cube trays that you can purchase at the Dollar Store. 

http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/ is the best website out there for baby food information.

There are some foods that are more economical than others to make verse buying.  The best deals I found were:
*Sweet Potatoes (baked them and then puree them)
*Zuchinni (steamed)
*Squash (steamed or baked)
*Broccoli
*Cauliflower
*Fruit that is in season at the time
*Vegetables that were on sale at the time

*Applesauce - I bought the jarred no sugar added applesauce it was way cheaper than making it myself with the apples and all the time that went into preparing the apples to be steamed

 I had a hard time getting green beans and peas smooth enough when my twins were younger so I bought those types of baby food verse making them myself.  As they got older I started mixing the foods together to give them more variety. 

I really enjoyed making their baby food and it was nice to know exactly what they were eating.  We started solids at 4 months which was rice cereal with they hated!   We moved to oatmeal shortly thereafter and they tolerated that more but didn't love it.  We introduced real solids at 5 months and their first solid meal was sweet potatoes and they were less than thrilled to start.  We introduced yogurt and cottage cheese at 6 months old which they both loved.  They got the hang of it quickly though and they were both on all table food by 12 months old.