My obsession from making my own baby food rather than buying
the trusty Gerber brand stemmed from breastfeeding. It was always my desire to
breastfeed for the first year of my daughter’s life but unfortunately destiny had other plans.
I exclusively breastfeed my daughter the first 6 weeks of her
life and then I had to return to work. I started pumping and getting a supply
when she was 5 weeks old. As the stress of going back to work sooner than I
wanted to and making the time during the work day to stop and pump my supply
quickly dwindled. The stress compounded my already ongoing problem since I was
diagnosed with PCOS. I tried all kinds of things to get my milk production to
go up and stay up. I was making and eating lactation cookies, drinking lactation teas, pumping
more at home in between feedings, and taking additional herbal supplements.
Sadly at nearly 5 months my daughter was switched from breast milk to formula.
I was so sad and cried through her entire first formula bottle.
That brings me to my obsession with baby food. I wanted to give
her breast milk as long as possible because it was the best and most nutritious
thing for her. When she started solids I was determined to making them myself
so she would be getting the purest and healthiest foods I could give her.
Nothing wrong with Gerber food, this was something I just wanted to do for
myself.
I started with making my own purees with bananas, apples,
butternut squash (her fave!), green beans, spinach, pears, carrots, sweet
potatoes, yams, broccoli (did not like it!), avocado and zucchini. As her pallet
has expanded and her two little teeth started chomping away I started to mix
flavors and leave it a little bit chucky so she could get used to different
textures.
I will admit that I do not make my own snack foods (maybe with
baby bump no. 2) so she absolutely goes nuts over the Gerber Puffs and Gerber Baby Cheetos. As soon as
they hit her highchair she immediately goes right for them and wiggles with
delight.
When I starting making batched purees I had been simply making each flavor separately and putting them in ice cube trays to freeze individual servings. As I became more daring, and
accepting that my baby was growing up, I started to mix flavors during meal
time.
Now that she is 10 months old I wanted to introduce poultry and meat. I wanted to make mini meals for her versus just single fruits and vegetables.
Anyone who knows me knows that I am not the cook in the house
so this was definitely a challenge for me. Here is my first experiment before mashing it up.
This has 5 ingredients which fits into my 5 ingredients or less
rule when trying a new recipe. This has butter, onions, yams, carrots, and
corn.
After feeling confident about what I had accomplished in my
first combo meal it was time to introduce poultry. It had butter, onions, yams, apples and chicken.
She LOVED them both and I was quite proud of myself after
finishing them. The kitchen may have been a disaster but I felt accomplished.
My dear husband just shook his head and smiled at my insane obsession with
making her food.
