I did it!

I did it! I made Lily's first baby food. I have talked about it quite a bit, and now I have done it.

Our pediatrician recommended starting Lily on rice cereal, but waiting for solids until she is six months old. We've been doing rice cereal for about a month and she is really getting the hang of it. His advice for starting solids is to do orange vegetables first, then yellow, green, and finally fruits. It is recommended that you introduce each vegetable for a few days before beginning a new one so that you can rule out food allergies.

The typical first foods, or Stage 1 foods for each are: carrots, sweet potato, squash, peas, and green beans. I've researched making your own baby food and figured out the best methods. I really like this website: http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/ I have found it to be really helpful. The procedure is to cook your pure vegetable (steam, roast, etc.), use a blender to puree it, adding water to smooth it out. When you have it as you like it, freeze it in ice cube trays and when frozen, store it in big ziploc freezer bags. From what I've read, one cube is about one ounce. I really think that it is going to save us some money and there is no reason I can't take a little bit of time to do it during the day.

Soooo, on to my experience today! Today I made steamed organic carrots (organic has less nitrates according to that website), and baked sweet potato. The biggest learning experience I had was that I had to use more water than I expected to thin it out. At first, I just couldn't get the blender to puree it, but the more water I added, the better it got. I made some a few weeks ago with summer squash, but it is so watery already that I didn't have to add any water, which gave me an unrealistic expectation on how much water to use, because it ended up taking quite a bit. As I type, it is in the freezer hardening up. I actually ended up with more sweet potato than I had ice cube trays so I may freeze some more when a tray opens up.

I am looking forward to feeding Lily some of my creations. I think we'll probably start with carrots, but who knows, maybe I'll change my mind to sweet potato.