Homemade Healthy Baby Food

Parents always want the best for our children, especially when it comes to homemade healthy baby food.  We’re faced with endless decisions and it seems like we’re always receiving contradicting information.  And often times, there isn’t just one school of thought that makes sense – we’re left to sort through a variety of ideas and opinions, and pick out the one that feels best for our children (and fits into our schedule and lifestyle demands).  But let’s be honest, how many of us have wondered where the freakin’ instruction manual is for this thing!?

Just one of the many decisions we’re faced with is food.  Breastfeed or formula?  Start solids at four months or six?  Introduce fruits or vegetables first?  Make our own baby food or use store bought?  Shall I go on?  I’ve already made a number of these decisions myself and I could describe the process by which I came to each conclusion, but this would probably bore everyone half to death.  So instead, I’m skipping ahead to the part about making your own baby food (if you’re not interested in making your own baby food, then again, you’ll be bored half to death).  Here’s what worked for me and maybe, just maybe it will work for you too.

I introduced foods using the GAPS protocol – a diet specifically designed to correct (or prevent, in this case) spectrum disorders in children. I also chose this diet for its tried and true development of a healthy gut flora, which also means a healthy immune system. GAPS suggests first introducing homemade bone broths around six months of age. I know this sounds strange, but broths are composed of dissolved amino acids (proteins) and minerals. A baby’s intestinal wall is not fully fused, which means partially undigested food can pass through the intestinal wall and into the blood stream where it can cause damage such as inflammation and food intolerances. This may also impact your baby’s lifetime immunity, so you really want to first introduce foods that are easy to digest like boiled meats, non-starchy veggies, and broths.

After a couple of weeks of broth, I started boiling a few non-starchy vegetables in bone broth, pureeing everything together and introducing each vegetable one at a time. Next came meats, which I cooked in the pressure cooker. We stuck to this sort of diet for quite a while. I used very few fruits – mostly just applesauce, pearsauce, bananas, and avocados – which I introduced slowly around 7 or 8 months of age. I also used a few seeds (Gaia Herbs Chia Fresh Daily Fiber and ground flaxseed) starting around seven months in order to alleviate some constipation.  And lastly, don’t forget the healthy fats – organic cold pressed olive oil, organic cold pressed coconut oil, homemade lard, Nordic Naturals Cod Liver Oil, and fats skimmed from the top of my homemade broths. I incorporated some type of fat with every meal seeing as how fats are essential for a healthy brain and neurological system.

I introduced a new food every three to five days to make sure Owen or June didn’t have a reaction to any of the new foods. For example, coconut oil didn’t seem to go over very well with Owen, but this was not the case with June. If your baby does have a mild adverse reaction, try the food again in a few months and see if things haven’t changed – a baby’s gut is incredibly dynamic, so a mild intolerance at seven months certainly doesn’t mean an intolerance for life.

I started off by introducing just a tablespoon of pureed food at a time. Over the course of a month, we worked our way up to eating 1-2 tablespoons of pureed food, 3 times per day. I also offered some well chopped, boiled meats at each feeding and water in a sippy cup. By 8 month of age, I allowed my babies to eat as much as they wanted at each feeding. I also started offering more snacks in addition to the 3 meals per day, but still allowed breastfeedings to be the primary snack and source of hydration.

I did allow some starchy vegetables including sweet potatoes, plantains, winter squash and carrots starting around 8 month of age, but these weren’t a primary source of nourishment. I starting allowing more of these after 9 months. At this point, I also starting allowing more fruits on a regular basis.

You may decide to do things entirely different, or even more likely, your baby will decide to do things entirely different.  Regardless, there are a few tricks that made making my own baby food manageable, so I thought I’d share.

1. Invest in an electric pressure cooker (this will be a life changing purchase) and plan to make a batch of homemade bone broth each week or every other week – enough to cook with and puree your foods.
2. Always make more than one pureed food at a time when starting off.  There’s no reason to wash the food processor (or blender or food mill) between foods.  Simply rinse and puree your next food.  In the long run, this saves washing, prep and clean up time, which adds up.
3. Along the same lines, buy as many ice cube trays as your freezer space will allow.  The number of different foods you can make each time will be limited by how much space is in your freezer.  You can buy fancy gadgets for freezing your food, but the ice cube trays are cheapest and in my opinion, work the best.  Each cube is approximately one ounce of food, so it’s easy to mix, match and measure how much food your baby is eating.
4. If you happen to make more food than you have ice cube trays, simply dollop the leftovers onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and freeze in 1 ounce “blobs.”  It’s not pretty, but it works and you don’t waste any food this way.
5. Once you know your baby can tolerate a number of veggies, just make one large pot of soup using bone broth and a number of different veggies. Puree this for a ready-made soup that can be frozen in batches or fed throughout the week.
6. Try to find meat solutions that can also be eaten by the rest of the family, so that you’re cooking fewer meals. For example, pulled chicken, pork or beef prepared in the pressure cooker are all great options. I’ve never been too concerned about baby eating spices, so feel free to season if you so choose. Ground meat is another good choice.

So you’ve cooked and pureed your food, it’s frozen in tiny cubes, and your freezer is now full of neatly labeled freezer bags.  Let me just say that you won’t believe how satisfying it is to see all those bags lined up. You can heat the cubes in a double boiler type of system or simply place the food in the microwave.  Heat and you’re ready to role!