Making Your Own Baby Food

Okay - so given my youngest is almost 6 months now, we've got her in the high chair for meals.  She is watching us intently, which I figure means she's ready for solids.

I remember first step last time being Rice Cereal.  Checked on trusty Babycentre.ca and that still seems to be a good suggested way to go (I know there's been some chat recently about changing what to intro first), so we'll be doing that.

Last time 'round I also successfully managed to make my own baby food, so in preparation for when that time comes, it's time for a bit of a refresher.

As far as I can remember, all I need is my blender (that thing I bought in my early twenties to make daiquiris, but have since worked out has other uses) and ice cube trays.  Then I just need to started steaming and boiling stuff, and I'll be on my way.

Last time (following a little while on just rice cereal) I started with sweet potato.  Peel, cut in to small pieces, steam, then blend with some of the water used for steaming. And done. Chicken was equally simple.  Boil it.  Pretty bland, so once I'd introed both that and apple sauce, I started mixing it together. 

I also took a workshop at my local Early Years Centre on Making Your Own Baby Food which offered a number of good tips, as well as some wonderful handouts on baby food, and introducing solids, which I found very useful.  So here they are again.

This first one is Sample Menus by age - done by Ottawa Public Health - which I found was a good guide for how much I should be feeding baby:
 

The second one I found really good was this one below, which lists good flavour combinations to try:


(Note: I know this one really isn't legible at the moment - blogger isn't playing nice with my computer and I can't upload pics properly from it at the moment.  When I figure it out, I'll fix it.)

Aside from these, I'll follow the rule of only introducing a new food every three days or so for allergy reasons.  And if she doesn't like something the first time, I'll just tuck it away for a while and reintroduce it again later and see if anything changes.
 

So that should keep me going for the first few months - until sometime between 7 and 9 months when, further to that seminar I attended last time 'round, I'll try making food less pureed and more lumpy so babies get use to different textures.  Apparently, if this "window" in age is missed, some babies end up on purees for a long time and reject other foods.  I honestly don't remember this being an issue with my first, but maybe that's because I "caught the window".  Who knows.