Baby Food Part 2

Evelyn is 8 1/2 months old. I've been feeding her chunkier food and I'm going to add protein into her diet with the new year! So, I thought I'd update all my friends that have babies coming into this stage (and post my ideas here so I will have them when we repeat this stage in a few years!). Here are some of the new things I have done with and without meat to prep for going back to work.

*Italian Style Veggies  (from the frozen and then I put in the vitamix on Variable 3-5, depending on how chunky I want them. I was going to put ground turkey with this but I decided to have the daycare do 2 veggie cubes and 1 cube with meat, so these are my veggie cubes.)

*Veggies and pasta: 1 bag frozen peas, 1 bag frozen butternut squash, 1/3 bag of  Ditalini pasta. This pasta is the perfect size for a "finger food." However, for this recipe I pureed the peas and squash (on variable 3 in the vitamix) and I'm adding the pasta for the chunkiness!

*I am using a lot of Stahlbush Island Farms frozen products. This week at Market Street I found Red Beans and Rice. I mixed 1 bag of red beans and rice with 6 stage 2 gerber pea containers. (I normally would have pureed my own but I had some containers of food that were about to expire)

*Chicken Soup: These egg noodles have a great recipe for chicken soup on the back and I just use a bag of peas and carrots as my vegetable and chop up the noodles a little before giving them to her.

*Sweet Potatoes and Chicken: 1 bag of frozen Sweet Potatoes and 1 small chicken breast or 1/2 of a large chicken breast (I baked mine in the oven with salt, pepper, and a little bit of garlic along with several other chicken breasts so I could use them to make the chicken soup). I pureed it on Variable 4 in the vitamin with 1/2 of a cup of the chicken broth from the pan. Personally I think the ratio of chicken to veggies is high so I plan on serving 1 cube of this with 2 cubes of veggies.

*Butternut squash and broccoli: 1 bag of frozen butternut squash with 1/2 to 3/4 a bag of chopped frozen broccoli. I think I'll have to mash the broccoli a little more when I feed it to her, but we will see.

I also found diced carrots, green beans, and peas in little to go containers in the canned vegetable section at wal-mart. My only complaint is that they contain salt, but they are great for on the go once rinsed in water. I also purchased the Alexia mashed potato cubes in the frozen section which are perfect!

She also loves chobani greek yogurt in every flavor we have tried so far (including lemon and pomegranate)

2 hours later I have 158 cubes of food in the freezer and we have lunch and dinner in the freezer for the next 2 months (plus some breakfast too!)

For breakfast I made:
*fresh diced bananas (3 bananas) with applesauce and pureed cranberries cooked in orange juice (I cook the cranberries on the stove).
*canned pears diced, canned diced mandrain oranges with applesauce and some pureed blueberries

I just mix stuff and sometimes add water until I get the right consistency or until I feel like it has enough chunk but not to much!

Hope this helps!

Baby Food

Several people have asked me how I make my own baby food and the order we have gone in on introduction...so here it is:

Food Introduction (based on the Learn N Fun Home Daycare plan ~ which I can't seem to link to their blog, but she was my resource!):
@ 4 months rice cereal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (if ready, some babies are...some aren't)
@ 5 months Vegetable testing: introduce a new vegetable each week starting on Saturday's (rice cereal for breakfast and then veggies for lunch and dinner). At our daycare she recommended using Gerber stage 1 during this phase and the next phase. I didn't mind because it meant we were being consistant at school and at home. I didn't start home cooked veggies until the end of month 6. However, I wasn't a big fan of how runny the premade food was and during this stage Evelyn also decided she liked baby food much better than milk so we mixed 2 oz of food, 1 scoop of formula, 2 formula scoops of rice cereal, and 1 oz of water. This gave her the nutrition from the formula (worked for us!)

• Week 1: green beans
• Week 2: peas
• Week 3:squash
• Week 4: carrots
• Week 5: sweet potatoes

@ 6 months Fruit testing: introduce a new fruit every half week (Saturday and Wednesday) using the same mixture 2 oz of food, 1 scoop of formula, 2 formula scoops of rice cereal, and 1 oz of water. We only feed Evelyn fruit for breakfast and she gets veggies only for lunch and dinner. At this point we started alternating green veggies for lunch and orange veggies for dinner

• Week 1: Bananas and Apples
• Week 2: Pears and Mango
• Week 3: Peaches

We also learned that if she starts to get a diaper rash or is on antibiotics to switch her back to an "all green" diet and bananas for fruit! It worked great

Once we made it through the fruit and veggie testing phase with no problems, I started making my own food in our vitamix. I purchased frozen organic vegetables, let them thaw on the counter and then blended them. At first I added more water to make them smooth, now I let them be a little chunky and she does good with that. I have a silicone tray that makes 1 oz cubes, but I hear ice cube trays work great too! 

• green beans and Brussel sprouts
• green beans and peas
• peas and brussel sprouts
• fresh spinach and frozen (thawed) carrots (only give 1-2 times a week ~ spinach is more gassy)
• broccoli (only give 1 time a week ~ more gassy)
• butternut squash and brussel sprouts
• sweet potatoes (which I steam 5-6 fresh ones in microwave, peel, add water, and freeze)

At first I blended the bananas, and don't be surprised that they turn brown when frozen. Now, I just mash them by hand in the mornings so they aren't as pureed. Again, anytime it's really thin I add a formula scoop of baby oatmeal.

• bananas and mangos
• bananas and blueberries
• bananas, oj, and cranberries (cranberries have been on sale so I cook 1/2 cup on the stove in oj and mix them with 4-6 bananas in the blender)
• bananas and applesauce
• mixed veggies (corn, carrots, peas)

Other things we have tried: 

• Avacados (she loves them!) I also just learned that you can freeze them...so I just took several out of the shell and froze 1/2 in snack size zip lock.
• Plain Greek Yogurt (she loves this too!)
• Pieces of cheese (bad idea ~ bad after effect that I had to clean up!)
• Flavored Applesauces in the jar without high fructose corn syrup. 

When I'm at the store now I just look for things that I can blend and she can try. I love going to the frozen food section at Sprouts/Whole Foods to see if they have anything "different" in the frozen section. In the next month I'm going to start adding chicken or black beans into the mixtures. 

We have also started some "pick up foods." Here's what we have done:

• Around 6 months an mum-mum cookie at 1 meal
• Around 6 1/2 months an mum-mum cookie at lunch and dinner
• Around 7 months (or when they can handle little chunks...at first she choked on these, so I would wait another week) I started the little "puffs" but those seemed to be a little small so we did the little cheeto looking things we found in the baby isle. Only 2-4 at dinner. 
• Around 7 1/2 months tried "puffs" again and she did fine but we quickly found that we like cheerios much better! They don't stick to her as much and they are a LOT cheaper especially since I can put her in the high chair and she can eat 10-15 while I get her food made/warmed up at each meal!
• Sippy Cup ~ we are also working on drinking 1/2 apple juice and 1/2 water out of our sippy cup...it's pretty funny! 
• I tried little pieces of avacado and peaches for her to pick up and eat...complete disaster...I'm hoping to get brave again and try in another week or so. 

Any other tips or tricks are always appreciated. This plan worked for us, I'm sure many people try many different things...but I thought I would share what worked for us since people have been asking!