After a bit of trial and error with different steaming methods, I had one that I really liked and was off and running!
So far...our freezer is stocked with carrots, peas and applesauce. Tonight, I will conquer green beans and grinding whole wheat rice to make our own cereal!
The crazy steaming contraption that I've come up with! Small pot of boiling water, C's Gordon Ramsey colander (which he was not impressed about!) and a lid from a larger pot!
LOVE my Kitchenaid blender! It purees so smooth...LOVE!
Voila! Baby food for Owen! 3lbs of carrots will produce approximately 42 servings
1 bag of frozen peas (1kg bag) will produce about 28 servings, while 9 peeled/cut/cored apples (macintosh) will produce about 56 servings of applesauce!
I've been doing a lot of research about the nutritional value in commercial infant cereals, and the more I read...the more I am against them.
First and foremost, the rice cereals are made with white rice. This means that they are primarily sugar and starch...aka...filler. Sure, they're fortified with iron, but Owen can get that from natural sources such as legumes and meat, as well as from his formula.
Rice is also a natural binder, which leads to uncomfortable gas pains, upset stomach and constipation. Definitely things that I'd like to avoid if at all possible. We had some constipation issues when Owen was a few weeks old, and I'd rather not revisit them!
Yes, he will need some grains in his diet to balance everything out, and clearly they're good for breakfast. Therefore, I've decided to make his cereal. We're going to start with whole wheat rice cereal later this week (probably the weekend) to practice with the spoon and things like that, and then will gradually move to oats and barley, both of which I will be making myself as well.
It's also been recently discovered that since commercial cereals hold zero nutritional value, some pediatricians are recommending skipping them all together, and to start with iron rich meats and legumes as baby's first foods.
We're going to do a combination of the two. We're going to start with homemade cereals so Owen gets experience feeding with a spoon, sitting in his chair...sort of queueing him to feeding time. Then we'll move to cereals for breakfast, add in some fruits for flavour and move to veggies, fruits and a meat for lunch. Dinner will consist of the same, and snacks will be bottles of formula.
I guess you could say we're on a roll! Owen's been showing signs of being ready for solids for over a month now, but we've held off to let his digestive system develop fully. Now that he's practically pulling food off our plate...it's time!
4 comments:
I totally agree about the comercial cereals. For the same binding issues, I made my own oatmeal cereal for Addie first, but it made her gag even when watered down because I couldn't find a way to grind it fine enough. There is an organic brown rice cereal made by "my organic baby" that is just iron fortified brown rice and it is really good. Addie loves it mixed with homemade applesauce.
hey!
Im going to use our spice/coffee grinder to grind the rice (and the oats/barley) - I'll report back to let you know how it goes!
Jack has constipation issues too, and we found that the rice cereal made it worse. However, we did oatmeal and that was fine, in fact, now that we've started solids, his pooping is sooooooooo much better. I didn't make my own cereal, I bought Gerber oatmeal with DHA/ARA. I'm pretty sure Gerber makes an organic cereal though.
I like that you put the number of servings, I was wondering how much a typical amount would make! We bought every kind of stage 1 babyfood in the store to see what Jack likes, and then when we figure it out, then we'll start making it.
Are those just ice cube trays, or special baby food trays? We're planning on making baby food, too :)
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