We have three children, and until very recently, I have never made baby food. Yup. I've always bought the Gerber jars and packages of baby food. Actually, we've spent a small fortune in baby food!
My adventures in making baby food began a few months ago, before Ruth was even eating solids. We had gone to a local peach orchard and bought a lot of peaches. We ate some of them, and I made a cobbler or something with some of them, and we still had some leftover. They were starting to get soft, so I got the bright idea of cooking them and making baby food so that we wouldn't lose the peaches. There weren't enough left to make a pie or anything, so this was the best use I could think of.
Being ignorant of making baby food, I did this the only way I knew how: cook the peaches like I do apples when I make applesauce. Since they were really tart peaches, I added some sugar. My food processor was still packed up in an unknown box in our shed at that time, so I used my hand mixer to puree the peaches as best as I could. After they were as thin as I could get them, I put the mixture into ice cube trays and froze it. I found out that Ruth couldn't eat the peaches until a few weeks ago because they were just a little too chunky for her.
But then a few weeks ago, while looking for something else in the shed, I found my food processor! My wheels started turning... what could I do with the food processor? I used it to grate up a huge block of cheese that we purchased from Costco, but I knew that there must be something else I could do, something that wouldn't take a lot of time.
Fast forward to this past Saturday. I was at the grocery store picking up some baby food for Ruth, and I noticed that the price per pound for the jar of sweet potatoes listed on the shelf sticker was something like $2.50/lb. Wow! This jar was $0.63. My lightning-fast brain said that I wasn't going to get a pound of baby food sweet potatoes for $2.50. I happened to be on the phone with my mom at the time and remarked to her about the cost. She said, "Why don't you make some baby food for her instead?" So I went over to the produce section and saw that a pound of sweet potatoes was $0.49. Hmmm.... this is really starting to make sense here. So I spent $0.88 for three sweet potatoes, took them home, washed them, baked them, and scooped the potato out of the skin and threw it into the food processor with some water. After I got it to the right consistency for Ruth, I put the sweet potato puree into the ice cube trays and had enough leftover for two more servings. Assuming that Ruth will eat two of the cubes of sweet potatoes in one sitting--because that's how much of the peaches she eats--I got 18 total servings for just $0.88! I pay more that than for a two-pack of Gerber sweet potatoes at Walmart! Oh, and guess what? Ruth likes these a lot more!
So in an effort to save money and feed my family a little healthier, I have decided to start making baby food whenever possible. It doesn't take much time, and it freezes well, so there is baby food on hand in the freezer--much like some of the healthier food items I've been making for my family lately. If I can cook healthier and a little cheaper for the rest of the family, and cook enough to freeze for another time, then why not do the same thing for the baby?
You know, the Proverbs 31 woman was a pretty resourceful lady. I'd really like to be more like her.
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