Making Homemade Baby Food

We bought a baby food grinder at Target and ground up chicken, turkey, burger, steak, steamed/baked vegetables, cooked fruits, noodles and home made soup. My husband and I started Ruth with eating some solids using the food grinder at nine months in conjunction with breast milk. It saved us money. I usually just ground up what we were having for dinner and did not add salt or a ton of spice to our food until after I had ground up her portion.

When you first begin making home made baby food, you want to start out the first couple of months with easy mild foods like baby oatmeal, apple sauce, carrot, spinach, broccoli, avocado, banana and sweet potato. Make sure everything that is hard to begin with is steamed or baked to softness before grinding.

We introduced a new food every five days or so and watched her carefully for allergic reactions and diarrhea. We used fresh whole foods and avoided processed foods as well as food colorings, aspartame, BHT, phen junk, sugar, salt etc.. If we went out for a meal, we'd bring a banana, applesauce, avocado and grind it all there at the table.

I recommend using the Munchkin hand held baby food mill. It is easy to clean and portable. The only thing that is hard about it is I didn't always have the strength to turn the crank when we put in meat. Lawson turned the crank for me. We also sometimes used our Magic Bullet to pulverize food especially meat when we were home. We would experiment and add a little plain yogurt or water to the pulverized meat to make it more runny.

Introduce one food for a whole week before a new one. We only allowed Ruth to eat one solid at a meal, especially for the first couple of months of introducing food before giving her two solids to eat and then three. It is a definitely a process you take your time and have fun with.