We'd always planned to make Beckett's baby food, but it worked out nicely that he started on solids right about the time the farmers' markets started opening, so we've been able to let him try fresh, local, seasonal, organic food straight from the farm — not a bad way to kick things off. :)
It's also been a pleasant surprise to find out just how easy it is to make your own baby food. I mean, really, there's not really a good reason not to do it yourself. It's much cheaper, even if you go organic, it tastes loads better, it uses less packaging, and you know exactly what's going in it.
Plus, it looks like this:
Yum. I'll admit, sometimes I steal a bite or two from the bowl. :) Wanna know how to do it? Take your food "X," cut it into small pieces, steam it for about 10 minutes (a little more or less, depending on how hard it is to begin with; you want to get it pretty soft), then throw it in the blender. You may need to add a little of the steaming water if it's too thick. And that's it! Easy as can be.
To make it even easier, we usually just try to feed him something that we're already going to make for dinner. The other night, we had a squash and zucchini salad, so while Matt was making that, we diced up some of the squash to make for Beckett. No biggie. He'll be trying the zucchini for the first time tomorrow. Once he's progressed past the individual purees, we're excited to start trying out some of the recipes from this book by Tyler Florence. He's big (and so are we) on baby eating what you eat, so he makes a lot of meals that work for everyone, plus he does a great job of introducing more complex flavors (roasted blueberries, anyone?) and combinations (roasted apple, carrot, and mango puree) right from the beginning. Yummy!
