Making your own baby food- what to make?

If you read my first blog post Making your own baby food-getting started, you are now equipped and ready to make some fresh, homemade food for your little one! If you haven’t yet, I highly suggest starting there so you know what equipment and products I recommend to make your life easier when you’re ready to get cooking 🙂

Let me start out by saying I am NOT a doctor and you should ALWAYS abide by guidelines and recommendations from your child’s pediatrician. These are simply suggestions based on my knowledge and what worked well for us.

Around 6 months is when babies are typically ready to begin solids (sometimes a bit sooner, again dependent upon your pediatrician’s recommendations). The phrase “solids” is sort of confusing, because this does not mean at 6 months old your baby is ready to bite into a cheeseburger. It simply means they are ready to eat foods other than their current diet of milk and milk.

Although many pediatricians suggest that baby’s first food does NOT need to be cereal (rice or oatmeal) like once believed was best, we did start with cereal with my son. He had some tummy troubles and signs pointing to him possibly being prone to food allergies (newborn eczema), so we wanted to take it slow. However, it is perfectly fine to start with food other than cereal! In fact, there are many other foods that are much more nutrient dense that can fill your little one up and nourish their little body with vitamins 🙂

I learned A LOT from reading this baby food book I am linking below. It offers wonderful, nutritious recipes for every stage of your baby’s development–even into the toddler/preschool age!

Here is my suggested shopping list for baby’s first foods. If you are wanting to make and prep for months ahead of time (HIGHLY recommended) you would do this all in one day (it’s possible–clear a few hours on a Saturday afternoon and gather a helper or two!). Otherwise, you would purchase these items as you go (the recommendation is usually to start one new food and wait about 3 days before trying another to make sure baby reacts well to it), using each item 1-3 days after purchase to guarantee freshness.

Shopping List

• 1 butternut squash
• 1 head of broccoli
• 1 fresh or 1 bag frozen mango
• 1 fresh or 1 bag frozen green beans
• 6 apples (Fuji are my favorite for making baby food)
• 3 sweet potatoes
• 6 pears
• 1 bunch bananas*
• 2-3 avocados*
• 1 canister of old fashioned oats (if you want to make your own oatmeal)

* these foods can be purchased fresh weekly and mashed room temperature to be served to baby OR they can be blended and froze. I did prep these ahead but I found myself using these fresh whenever I had them too because it was a quick baby food to make or take on-the-go that I didn’t have to thaw ahead of time.

Organic or nonorganic?

That is the question. I did buy all of this first haul in the organic section of our grocery store. However, is it a NECESSITY? Here is some insight…

Have you heard of the “Dirty Dozen”? It’s a list of the 12 foods that are grown containing the most pesticides…NOT something you want in your baby’s food. Therefore, if you don’t typically shop organic, at least consider it for these 12 items.

So now that you have your baby food tools + ingredients–next up will be making, prepping & freezing! What questions do you have so far about the process? What other foods have you made for your little one that aren’t on my list of firsts? What was their first solid food/purée?

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