Healthy Homemade Baby Food

One of the best starts you can give to your baby is feeding him or her healthy baby food. The best way to insure that your baby is getting the nutrition he or she needs is to make your own. Commercial baby food is often low in nutrition, highly processed and packed with preservatives.

Here's a great article on making your own baby food.

http://chefbrad.com/education/articles.php?qid=1

One of the best advice I was given about making my own baby food was to use ice cube trays to freeze it in. You can puree up a big batch of fresh squash or fruit and freeze it into an ice cube tray. Then the next day, pop out the cubes and store them in labeled freezer bags. When serving, just pop out the cube, unthaw it and serve. This makes baby food as easy as commercial baby food. That is important for busy mothers!

Baby cereal is very easy to make using freshly ground whole grains. Here's the recipe I use for my babies:

2 C. Rolled Oats
2 C. Brown Rice
1 C. Wheat Germ
4 unsweetened dry bananas*

Blend Oats and Wheat Germ in blender for a few minutes. Add bananas and blend until uniform. Grind Rice in grain mill (or a blender if it's high quality - mine doesn't make it fine enough). Combine Rice with other mixture. Store in refrigerator in an airtight container.

When serving, combine 3 T. cereal mixture with 3/4 C. water. Heat to boiling, stirring constantly until thick. Let cool before serving.

*Instead of bananas you can sweeten the cereal with unsweetened applesauce or other fruit puree. Just add it after heating the grains. This is a good way to cool the cereal down faster as well.

I usually start them on this about 8-9 mos. For young babies (6-9 mos.) begin with just a single ground grain (Brown rice, oats or millet are good choices) and mother's milk as sweetener and to mix.

Here are some of my favorite baby-food products: