making my own baby food

I may be all natural in some areas, but even I don’t make my own clothing or dwelling places. One thing I am passionate about making, however, is my children’s baby food. (But don’t get me wrong, my kids have all eaten baby food out of jars, too. I may do things the natural way, but I’m not 100% a purist.)

Consider this post an abbreviated lesson on making your own superduperhealthy baby food from scratch. (This is assuming your baby has already begun solids with a great starter food such as rice or bananas. Once baby is ready for combined solids and is at least 7 month old, heartier meals like the one I am going to share can be introduced.) And if I can do this, anyone can. Because remember, I hate to cook.

A great basis to any baby food dish is a legume. Beans. Incredibly healthy sources of protein, fiber and nutrients. To begin, simply scour your cupboards to see if you have any. Or buy them in bulk at the natural food store. Or dry in bags at the grocer. From here, there are two ways to proceed: Either cook the beans, and then blend them up in your food processor or grind the dry beans first, and then cook the powdery result with water. The second is much, much quicker. And I like quick. So I choose that way to proceed.

Mix the dry, ground beans in with some water and bring to a boil on the stovetop. Reduce heat and simmer the bean mix until the water is absorbed and the mixture is soft. (This technique also works great with ground brown rice. This is the basis to much of my children’s baby food, in fact.)

Is this sounding like a lot of work? Don’t forget that you can grind a bunch of beans or rice ahead of time, and then just cook up a quick batch using some of it. The cooking itself only takes about 5 minutes. Keep in mind that ground rice and bean baby food does not reconstitute well. So just make as much as you think your baby will eat at that meal, and not a whole lot more. The consistency of leftovers can be kind of off.

Next, it is time to add some extra nutrition to your baby’s meal. Some favorites add-ins of mine (because they are just so darn healthy and packed with vitamins) are:

Nutritional Yeast. Available at your natural food store, these yummy flakes (incredibly similar to brewer’s yeast) bring heaps of Vitamin B’s to the table. My mom used to make us a health “shake” before breakfast every morning that had as one of it’s main ingredients nutritional yeast.

Flax oil. A huge benefit of flax oil is the omega fatty acids it provides. Don’t forget the power of the wondrous avocado as a baby food as well. It is nutritious for the same reason. I dash a bit of flax oil into the baby food I make and also into the boys’ oatmeal in the morning (though, lately, we are on an eggs-for-breakfast kick.) We don’t drink much juice at all in our family, but I have heard of folks who get flax oil into their kids by putting a little “shot” of it into their children’s morning cup of OJ.

Other astonishingly nutritious add-ins include: cooked egg yolk (an amazing source of nutrition for babies–they can eat this before age one, provided you do not serve the egg white with it), freshly ground flax seeds (they need to be ground right before eating to get the most health benefit, though adding whole seeds to recipes adds an interesting crunch, nut butters, tahini, kale or other ground legumes.

With this as your base baby food dish (that I serve daily to my baby food eaters), you can also add to your baby’s diet cooked. Our favorite things to add? Veggies, fruits and plain yogurt. I’m hoping that my children’s growing brains and hungry tummies will thank me for starting them off on a nutritionally sound basis.

So that’s why I make my own baby food.