My New Hobby

A number of years ago I visited a friend of mine that had 2 small children and she introduced me to the world of making your own baby food. I never thought that it was possible before then...but she showed me that a jar of baby food ingredients were just the food itself and water (which is added to thin the food into a puree). I thought to myself...well, I could do that! And years later, I am. :) It's something that I knew that I was going to do from the moment that I got pregnant with Claire. A lot of people like to make their own baby food because they control what goes into their babies tummies (i.e. organic foods, whole foods etc). And yes, that is nice to me...but my main reasons are a little different. For one...I'm saving my family a ton of money!! And the second reason is that Claire is a picky eater and I enjoy that I can control the mixture of the foods that she eats and the texture (thickness) of the purees. I actually make my foods a lot thicker than the purees in the jars and she does great with them! As far as the money is concerned...with some foods, I'm not saving a ton of money. For instance, yesterday I purchased 3 winter squash for $5 which yielded approx 40 oz of baby food. This saved me about $1.50. BUT, I also purchased 7 bananas for just $1.23...this saved me approx $5.50!!

Another reason that I've enjoyed making Claire's baby food is that I've really developed a hobby of cooking. Before I was married I was NOT a cook. Don't get me wrong...I LONGED to be...but I never learned how. I knew how to make a box of Hamburger Helper and heat up a can of veggies but that's about as good as it got. Slowly but surely over the last 5 1/2 years I've learned and last year when I stopped working it became a fun hobby for me. I all of a sudden had time to spend in the kitchen. (And thankfully, I have a husband who will try out anything). Making dinner is no longer a burden...it's fun for me. I love to have a wholesome meal for Bradley when he gets home from work. I love to hear the words "this is delicious" from him. Anyway...I'm going off on a tangent. I mainly just wanted to share that I love making Claire's food. I feel like I'm not only helping her to eat healthy, but I'm also saving my family a lot of money. And it's super easy...if I can do it...you can too!!

Check out this website for more info on making your own baby food.


A can of prunes in the food processor about to be pureed.

Pureed prunes in ice cube trays. You freeze the puree in ice cube trays (each cube is approx 1 oz of food). Once the food is frozen, you pop them out of the trays and put them in a gallon size freezer bag. Then, when you need food for baby...you open up the ziploc, grab however many oz you need and thaw in the microwave.

Winter squash about to go into the oven.

Cooked winter squash cooling before getting pureed.

3 Winter Squash yielded approx 40 oz of puree.