Baby Food Adventures

I'm going to start by saying that I never thought I'd be the kind of mom that wanted to make homemade babyfood. Why do all that work when you can just go to the store and buy the jars? But when Isaac started actually eating it, I tasted it and WOWZA! Some of those flavors taste nothing like the real thing! I also realized that there are so many fruits and veggies that you can't buy in the jars. Now, I have nothing against jarred baby food. In fact, most of the time, that's what Isaac eats. But I decided that I wanted to do what I could to expose him to all sorts of different flavors, not just the standards like peas, green beans, squash, sweet potatoes, applesauce, you get the idea.

I bought this book on Amazon. I didn't follow the recipes to the T, just used it more for inspiration than anything else. It's a pretty good book with lots of good ideas.


Today I decided to make mangos, rutabagas, and asparagus. Then after I made the first two, I decided to save the asparagus for later.

Here are the supplies I started with:


I bought a baby food mill, but I'm going to return it because the Magic Bullet that we already have works wonderfully.

I started with the mango, since it's the simplest. Up until this point, I've only used foods that don't require cooking - bananas and avacados. Mangos are the same. You just peel and slice it, then stick it in the Bullet and voila! Although it was VERY runny, so I added a little rice cereal to thicken it up a bit.


One mango yeilds about two servings. I just use these little Rubbermaid containers because I haven't had the foresight to save our used baby food jars. I put one in the fridge to use later today. The other I put in the freezer after labeling it with my handy dandy labeler.


Next up - the rutabaga. I'll admit, I've barely even seen a rutabaga before let alone know what they taste like. This was one of my inspirations from the book. First, you have to peel it, kind of like a potato but way harder. Then chop it up into little cubes. That was also harder than I expected. Who knew rutabagas were so tough!

I saved a little more than half of it because James said he wanted to make fried rutabagas or something crazy like that. And he thinks I'm weird for taking pictures of food and posting them on the interweb. (Anyone get the Scrubs reference?) But I digress...

Next you have to steam it. The book said about 12 minutes, but it turned out to be more like 20. (That's ok because while they were steaming, I whipped up a quick meatloaf and popped it in the oven for dinner.) 

Then I threw them in the Magic Bullet and blended them. I found that I had to add about two ounces of formula or else it was too thick. 

And here is the final product! 

Update: Isaac loved the Mango! Unfortuately, he wasn't so crazy about the rutabaga. I don't think it was the taste he disliked, since he opened his mouth willingly each time for another bite. But then he'd just hold his mouth open and start spitting it out while babbling. I'm thinking it was a texture issue. I ended up having to add a lot more liquid to it because it was so thick. Next time I'm going to try mixing it with something else, like peas, carrots, or sweet potatoes.