1 year old banana... yuck!

As most of you know, baby food has a shelf life of 1 year! Would you feed your baby a year old banana? No way! They say it's just as healthy... yadda yadda... How on earth could baby food that can be in your pantry for a full year not have something added to it? And I know we've all tasted baby food and tried guessing what the food is suppose to be. Well, with home-made baby food, you can guess correctly every time!! That alone is a good enough reason to switch for me. Switching to home-made baby food was the easiest thing I've done so far and my little one LOVES his fresh food so much more!

We were given some jars of baby food that we used in the beginning and I bought rice cereal from the store because, to be honest, I was kind of nervous about starting the process... and I thought it would be easier to just use what we had. I was also afraid I wouldn't get the food pureed well enough for such a young baby, of course I was wrong!

Preston quickly got tired of the rice cereal so we switched to oatmeal. I used some of the baby food we already had to add some flavor. I figured starting this way would make the transition easier. I just used a food processor that we already had to puree the oatmeal. This started out very humorous! He didn't know what to think of the new texture at all! But it didn't take long for him to be hooked! In the beginning, I was making the oatmeal one meal at a time, when he needed it, and I thought to myself, oh my goodness what did I get myself into! It is such a pain to do it this way because it takes so long to cook and cool. I finally decided to try my hand at freezing the oatmeal. I also decided to jump into fresh fruits and veggies!

Without thinking, I went and bought sweet potatoes, squash, carrots and mangoes. Yup that's right... all orange foods! Oops! If you didn't know, when you feed your child primarily orange foods they will turn orange! I also got apples and bananas to add to his oatmeal. Shortly after this I got peas and green beans so that we had some other colors as well! He has LOVED every food except green beans! I have to add peas or apples to his green beans to make him eat them!

I have used http://wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com/ as my primary information source.  This website pretty much covers everything! It will tell you when you can introduce different types of food, how to cook them, different recipes, etc. I highly recommend it if you're planning to start this awesome adventure for your little one!

I was given a couple different types of baby food freezing containers. Cute plastic ones with snap shut lids and freezable canning jars. I also use the ice cube method. I use some of the baby food jars I kept to heat up the cubes in. Baby food jars from the store are NOT meant to be used in the freezer! The only thing that I don't really like about the plastic containers is that I end up having to clean two things instead of just one because you don't want to heat plastic in the microwave. It's not really that big of an issue though, I just take a couple of them and heat them together in a larger dish. I like to use my ice cube trays for foods I like to mix and for foods I don't like giving him such large portions of. This method also gets used when I run out of other containers! It's definitely the easiest method when freezing large volumes of food! They also make it easier when all he wants is another ounce or two, that way I'm not heating up more than he needs! I will usually just freeze enough for a couple weeks at a time. The food lasts for a month in the freezer and no more than 48 hours in the fridge!

The only issue I've had is accidentally adding too much liquid and ending up with runny baby food! So the big tip I have, is to add liquids a little at a time! Some foods actually don't need anything added or just a very small amount. It's also handy to keep a box of the store bought rice cereal on hand to add to your food to thicken it up, just in case.

Traveling with home made baby food is actually MUCH easier than I expected as well. I haven't gone on any long distance trips with it yet though! We'll be doing that in May, so I'll update you on that experience then! If I'm going somewhere with a microwave I just put the frozen food in an insulated lunch bag with a small ice pack and heat it up when we get there. If there isn't going to be a microwave and it'll be no more than an hour before feeding him, I will heat it up and put it in the insulated lunch bag before we leave. Easy peasy!