Beaba Babycook

One of my favorite things I did with Cale when he was younger was make his babyfood. Of course going to the store and buying Gerber baby food jars is convienant, but let me tell you a couple reasons why homemade is better.

1) Cost
Each jar of baby food ranges between $0.65 and $1.29. This depends what "stage" of food you need (stage 1-3 or graduates, depending on the age of your baby, and also organic is more expensive.) Do you really think it costs $1 for that tiny amount of food? I don't think so. For example, if you made your own baby food using just 1 sweet potato (about $1.25 for a large sweet potato) it will yield about 3 times as much as you get for the same price in the store. (And this is an expensive example. Apples, pears, and many vegetables are even cheaper.)

2) Health
Making your own organic babyfood means you know where your food is coming from! Jarred babyfoods (even the "organic" ones)are sealed with preservatives that are not healthy. Also, to kill bacteria and prepare the jar for a long shelf life, manufacturers cook the foods at VERY high temperatures, which cooks out many of the vitamins, nutrients, and taste of the foods.

Making your own can be fun! You get to choose what your baby eats, and in fact, most of the time you can just puree what the rest of your family is eating and feed it to the baby. Your baby will have a much higher varitety of foods this way.

SO! How do you make it? When I made food for Cale I steamed the food on the stove and then mashed them by hand, and froze them in covered ice cube trays. Each ice cube was about 1oz of food, and it was so easy just to thaw out 1 or 2 cubes before mealtime. This also helps with waste, because once a jar of food is opened and used, you cannot save the rest later. It must be trashed.

When our new baby is born in June I am going to take the easier route and purchase the Beaba Babycook. (sold on Amazon, Babies R Us, and here: http://www.beabausa.com/product-babycook.cfm)

The Beaba Babycook does all the steps for you! First you slice up your food, put it in the steamer and let it steam. After a short period of time, the food is soft and ready to puree, which the Babycook will also do for you! What a time saver.
I cannot wait to purchase it!

Anyway, I hope some of you rethink how you will feed your babies! There are so many healthier options out there if you just take the time to research it.

Thank you to my friend Tahnee who is pregnant with her first, for recommending that I blog about my favorite baby methods!