I'm no Martha Stewart but...

I just love cooking for my baby.  I'm not talking about my big baby (hubby), I'm talking about my little baby (my son).  I wish I loved cooking for hubby and myself.  Anyway, Baby K started solid foods about 2 months ago and it's been an awesome experience for both of us.  I love cooking for him and watching him try the different foods.  I love introducing a new food and looking at his initial reaction to the taste (which is usually hilarious).  That boy is so expressive.

I am more than fulfilling my wishes for him as it pertains to food.  Firstly, I wanted to nurse him but thought I wouldn't be able to because I'm a coward when it comes to pain.  Although the first few weeks of breastfeeding was uncomfortable it got better and now it's so natural to me.  I'm so glad that my little guy is 7 months old and I'm still nursing and giving him expressed milk.  Because I'm working my supply is dwindling but I'm still hanging in there.  My future plan is to do half formula, half breast milk in the future.  Secondly, I've always thought it would be cool to make my own baby food because of cost and because I know exactly what he's getting.  I also like the idea of cooking for my baby.  I didn't think I would be able to do this because of work and other obligations.  Fortunately, I've been able to.  So far my baby has eaten rice cereal, oatmeal cereal, sweet potatoes, avocado (least favorite), green peas, carrot, yellow squash, bananas, prunes, pears, mangoes, peaches, and apples.  Everything except the cereals and the prunes have been prepared at home.  The non-DIY baby foods are store-bought and we mainly use Earth's Best or Plum organic baby food.

So cooking all this stuff is actually not that difficult.  I have to give credit to my little helper (well big helper), the Beaba Babycook.  I love this thing and all those foods (except the bananas of course) were cooked in this little gadget.  It does all the essentials--cooks and purees the food.  It can also defrost frozen foods.  It's pretty neat because I just chop up the fruits or vegetables, put it in there to cook while I'm doing something else, then puree it, then serve or store.

















I usually make a week or 2 (the most) at a time and then stick it in the freezer.  I've tried several storage containers including:

I think I like the bottom set the best (from Dr. Brown's) but I use all of them.  We mainly use these spoons (which he also loves to chew on):

The entire spoon is made out of soft silicone so it's very easy on the gums.  It helps that the handle is silicone because sometimes he'll put it in his mouth from the wrong end.  Recently whenever I feed him, I give him his own spoon since he frequently reaches out and grabs the spoon that I'm using.  He wants to help so I give him his own spoon to experiment.  This actually works out great and makes feeding easier because he's not fighting to get my spoon.

To serve food we use several things:

We have also served bananas in these (which keeps him busy in the high chair while I do some other things in the kitchen):

I've discovered that the broth the fruits make after they are cooked usually taste really good (especially the apples).  They taste very similar to juice but of course without all the added "stuff."  I've put a small amount the apple juice (from the fruits that were cooked in the Babycook) in a sippy cup and given it to my baby so that he can get practice using a cup.   I don't like the idea of just giving him plain water or diluting fruit juice.  He actually hasn't had much juice yet because we are just practicing using the cup.  We prefer the Avent sippy cups.  The cover also can be used on the Avent baby bottles that we use.

We also like these bibs the best when serving solid foods:

And of course, meals are more exciting for both of us when it's served in a high chair.  We love our high chair.  I think it's very nice (it was handed down to us by a friend).  Needless to say that I have to clean the high chair and the area around it after almost every meal :).

Of course this is just what we use.  Half the stuff we probably don't need but they make meal time more exciting for us, or maybe just me.  Next week we will try butternut squash and maybe papaya.

Mrs. K