New Homemade Purees!

Claire's adventures in eating are really stretching my creativity.  She's mastered carrots, peas, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, apples, pears, bananas, and plums with blueberries (my new masterpiece). 

I'm planning on trying more "exciting" foods as she's almost 8 months old (can you believe it??)
I read in one of our baby books a good first "finger" food is simply a piece of wheat bread.  Of course, Claire plays with it a lot, but when she does put it in her mouth, she acts like it's the most disgusting food ever.  Kind of funny.

My freezer has been overtaken by frozen baby food!  I swear we have real food for us, too.

So what have I made and what am I planning?  First, what I've made:
I've already discussed the traditional veggies.  I made apples out of Gala apples which were incredibly sweet and delicious (trust me, I took quite the sample).  I peeled them, cored them, then steamed them.  Worked great!  Very smooth!  I added water right from the steamer to keep as many nutrients as I could.  I did the same for pears, although I read you can mash up without cooking a ripe pear.  I peeled, cored, and steamed them briefly, just to soften them.  I barely needed water to get it pureed.  For the bananas, I was really nervous because I've had bad experiences with ruining bananas thanks to sticking them in the fridge.  But I'm not the kind of person who's going to keep these on hand fresh just for her (I'll eat all of them, I know me).  So I threw all the bananas in the food processor (with just a dash of lemon, in hopes of stopping any browning).  They did turn dark, but not really much different than the color of the processed ones at the store.  I mix it with her oatmeal and it's sooo good.  I tried that too.  I'm a flavored oatmeal girl, I love those microwave packets.  This beats that any day!  They froze just fine, too. 

Like you can see, they are a little brown, but if you think of other banana snacks not loaded with preservatives, you get the same color, so I'm okay with that.  And it tastes SO yummy right out of the microwave!

Now for my planning!  My newest creation was plums with blueberries.  I have no idea how I thought that up.  I was originally going to throw strawberries in, too, since I don't know anyone in my family with an allergy to them, but then I freaked out (and the food processor was full, so I felt like it was a sign).  I couldn't find organic plums (let alone plums at all for the longest time!) at the time, so I boiled them, peeled the skin, cut around the "nut" and threw them in the processor.  Then I cleaned the blueberries (I swore they were organic, but I threw the package away without confirming) and threw them in raw.  It made quite the pretty purple ice cube!  Matt ate one this evening and I tried it--delicious.  Good flavor, healthy, no sugar!  I left some in the fridge and it definitely jelled up (natural pectin, I suppose), but I mixed it with rice cereal no problem.

Look at that color!  I always feel like more colorful food must be better tasting--in this case, I'm just about right.  Soo good!  Claire agrees!

The last frontier to try has been meat.  I honestly waited until almost 8 months to give it to her simply because I was so undecided about how I wanted to approach it.  I am very leery of antibiotics and hormones and Lord knows what else goes into regular meat in the store (I remember a time I was at a fancy grocery store and couldn't find the processed giant chicken breasts and had to ask--I specifically ASKED for the ones that were pumped full of hormones and steroids because you get more for your breast... ew!).  I bought some jars of Gerber baby meat/gravy.  I wasn't pleased they added cornstarch to it (since I wouldn't have done that), but I figured I'd give it a go.  Of course, they do not advertise the quality of their meat (at least, not on the tiny jar).  After I realized they were 92 cents a jar, I figured perhaps I could research a little more.  And guess what I found!  Organic, free range, no antibiotic/hormone chicken breast, at Wal-mart of all places!  So I bought the chicken breasts, baked them, and pureed them.  It turned into a chicken mousse sort of (gross... so gross) but I imagine if you make chicken salad, it's close to that consistency?  I don't eat chicken salad, so I don't know.  I have that in the freezer now. 

My frozen chicken vs Gerber baby food.  About the same serving size, but I made 24 servings for $6, instead of almost $1 a serving!  And I know this chicken was well cooked--because I did it!

I've been trying to duplicate what a normal baby  might be offered eating off store shelves, so I have the options of turkey, beef, chicken, and ham (that's disgusting).  I don't know what I'll do from here, but I do have some roasts from my dad's cows that I know are of course organic, free range, no hormones/antibiotics since they live on his farm.  That might be next, because I know it's safe.  As for ham, I don't eat that, either, so I don't know how you find true ham without a ton of salt.  I'll have to look.  You'd think she could just have regular pork, like a chop, but then I worry about cooking it enough.  As for turkey, I'm going to have to get creative and start calling around.  Look at those giant frozen turkeys at your supermarket, then look at proud turkeys running wild... I don't want to feed Claire the Schwarzenegger of turkeys!

She's doing great with the food--but we definitely have every poo problem they warn about!  Grainy for pears, stinky (so bad) for meat.  Too much fruit gives her terrible rashes, so bad we even had to ditch cloth for the last few days just to slather her with creams to clear it up (we're back on cloth tomorrow though, all healed!). 

The freezing process!

Her spitting up also seems to be getting better.  She's definitely replacing her meals with solids--a bottle just doesn't cut it anymore!  I always mix cereal (oatmeal or rice) with her veggie/fruit/meat.  It seems to be the easiest way.  Usually when we test new foods we give it to her plain, but a lot of times she's just not ready for that full flavor and she'll make awful faces.  I've been trying to get away from that so she gets a stronger palate, but when you feed her and she doesn't like something, well, you are fighting a losing battle!  Just ask the lonely frozen half of the avocado still in the freezer.  That was awful (and I tasted it, and yes, it was so awful even I gagged and she laughed at me).  So we'll have to see where we go next!