Weaning your baby for best nutrition

After you reach the ‘weaning stage’ and you are ready to introduce your baby to more ‘substantial food’ you have the choice of buying pre-prepared manufactured Baby Food, or it can be simple, healthy and also cost-efficient to make your baby’s food yourself, from your own ingredients, at home.

Homemade baby food allows you to pick the ingredients!

Homemade baby food, allows you to control  all of the ingredients.  either fruit or vegetables, homemade baby food is not difficult to prepare and to, store and reheat.  You can even prepare tasty combinations of fruits and/or vegetables that will increase the vitamin and nutrition content of your baby’s food once you have persuaded the baby to try the new texture, feel and taste of this new kind of eating.

Take care to look out for any allergic reaction to newly introduced food.

When trying the new food it is important that the first time a baby eats this food, it is not combined with another new food because we should carefully watch for any allergies. If a baby for instance ate two new foods, mixed together and developed hives, or an allergic rash the parent would not know which of the foods was the cause.

A blender or food-mixer is all you need.

• All you need to prepare baby food at home is a blender or a food processor.
• All one needs to store baby food in convenient portions is a suitable ice cube tray. 

Cook your vegetables, in the normal way, using only water as cooking liquid.  The microwave or stovetop are equally fine.  You can economically make more than the baby will eat in one sitting, since you can store the excess. 

Cook vegetables or firm fruits until they are soft enough to puree.  Once softened, you can pour off some of the cooking water before you puree it.  Homemade baby food should prepared to have the consistency of apple-sauce until your baby is old enough to eat more textured food. The food will, as mentioned be Pureed in the blender or food processor.

The fruit or vegetable you use in the making your own baby food, allows the baby try vegetables that you won’t often find in the grocery store.  Try such items as zucchini, spinach, broccoli, squash, potatoes, and even cauliflower.  Avocado is very healthy, and this doesn’t need to be cooked first.  Of course, regular standbys such as carrots, peas, and yams are also easy to prepare as homemade.

All fruits do not need to be cooked first, unless, as explained above, it is necessary to soften them.  Firmer fruits such as apples and pears, should be peeled and cooked first.  Melons, plums, mangoes, peaches, nectarines, bananas, and berries can be simply just be washed, sliced and pureed without any cooking.  One member of the fruit family to avoid in a babies first year is strawberries  as they are a common allergen.  Fruits don’t need to be sweetened, and seldom need added water. 

Once the baby food has attained the desired consistency, you can pour it into an sterilized ice cube tray and freeze.  Once frozen, the cubes are removed and stored in a ‘Ziploc bag’ in the freezer.
Make sure to label the bag so you remember, it’s contents, what veggie it is, and dated.  The individual cubes can be heated in the microwave whenever needed.

Make an effort and feed your little one right!

So be ready to make the effort, the finest food you can give your child is food prepared with loving care by you! It is not only the most nutritional but it will cost you a lot less than the Grocery store prepared food.