Solid Food Freedom: Easiest Homemade Baby Food

I know, I’m taking it back, but now that I’m a bit out of the woods in that I no longer have a baby at home (sniff, sniff, our youngest turned 2! Where does the time go, it goes so fast, all of it is true) I can look back and see some really critical points that helped me figure out how to be me and also a mom after having kids. (Also, it’s nostalgic and fun to look back and remember these times and marvel at how we did it!) One of the big ones was the six month mark when they were ready to start eating solid food.

When they can’t eat solid food, you just gotta take 'em with.

Neither of my kids took well to bottles of expressed milk. They treated it much the same way I treat American “cheese”—with great disdain and only to be consumed during the direst of circumstances (because it tastes like plastic flavored with old sweaty socks)—and I’m pretty sure both my kids would have preferred that to expressed milk in a bottle. I found out much too late that there are a few reasons they might not have liked the taste of expressed milk except on rare occasions, and never put two and two together that they were more likely to drink it if it was fresh and not stored, basically only a few hours old.

The nice thing before six months is I never had to think about packing food or water for the baby!

So the first six months with both of my kids were a frenzy of logistics trying to figure out how to work and/or exercise while juggling nursing and pumping schedules. There was a lot of bringing the a baby along while I helped teach avalanche classes or went skiing, or me feeling panicked on a ski day when I was running behind schedule to get back to the baby. On the upside, it made me tour and hike way faster—there’s nothing like the thought of her hungry baby to make a new mom move faster than ever in the mountains. NO THERE ISN’T TIME TO STOP FOR A SNACK AND YES I’M HUNGRY AND GROUCHY WHY DO YOU ASK? People are always surprised when new moms have impressive athletic performances and I’m always like, yep, I know why she’s so fast. Duh.

I’ve only been gone two minutes and already all I can’t think about is that the baby probably needs milk, better hurry and rush back!

At any rate, when my kids started eating solid foods it opened up the next level of freedom. I could leave for a whole day sometimes! The logistics did not get any easier (pumping, schedules, prepping the solid food, etc.), nor was it less stressful, but it did allow the freedom and the return to a new normal in some ways. However, I quickly realized that I wasn’t going to be the one to pull off the colorful, adorable freezer and fridge full of perfect homemade veggie and fruit purees. I wanted a way to feed my kids healthy, whole foods, but with a minimum of prep involved. Oh, and I wanted it to be stuff the kids could mostly feed to themselves.

Babies helping lead avalanche courses?

There are a million books and ways to start babies on solids, and I’m sure that every family and baby has a slightly different best way for them. For us, the method that worked the best involved a mashup of two books: Baby-Led Weaning and Super Baby Food.

Baby-Led Weaning is about a style of baby feeding—letting them do it themselves rather than spooning the puree into their mouths. It’s a bit more controversial as it involves letting your baby grab the foods and feed themselves. It can be messy and also a little terrifying watching your six month old cram chunks of food into their mouth and gag them back up. I don’t want to sugarcoat it. But for us it was a good choice with both of our kids; definitely research it for yourself if this is an option you are considering because it is certainly not for everyone or every baby. If you are thinking of dabbling, I recommend reading the whole book as there are a lot of things to think about before just plopping food on the high chair in front of the baby.

No spoons necessary!

Super Baby Food is more about recipes for baby food and when to introduce different foods, and I found it very helpful. The recipe method is genius—you make your own grain mix by grinding whole grains in a food processor or high-powered blender, later adding dried beans and other spices to mix it up as the babies grow. I mainly did the grains, and just prepped the grain cereal mixes in bigger batches and stored them in jars in the fridge. Then, I could cook a batch that would last several days in the fridge, and I could add veggies or yogurt or mashed fruit to mix it up. But the best thing I discovered was if I cooked the pulverized grains just right they would congeal in the fridge into a sliceable substance—sort of a “jello jiggler” made out of brown rice or any number of grains. This was baby food at its very best: convenient, wholesome, portable, and grab-able.

Once we figured out our method and our recipes, I could pump milk in the morning, prep a container with these jiggly grain “sticks,” plus maybe some cold baked sweet potato, pear, an avocado, or plain whole milk yogurt and I knew that if I nursed the baby once or twice in the morning and left the food plus several ounces of just-pumped milk, they would be happy (okay, they would be fed at least) until I got home. As we got our routine down I could ski (“work”) sometimes until 4 pm, and there was one memorable day where I was gone for twelve hours helping teach a class and got stuck in totally stopped traffic on the way home. I hadn’t pumped as I wanted to save milk for the baby, so I was totally engorged and using the hand pump in the car, crying with no cell service to even let my husband know I was coming. By the time I made it home (less than a mile, over an hour later), I was a wreck but the baby was a little fussy but totally fine. Yay husband! Yay solids! Yay resilient babies. And YAY manual hand pumps, seriously, a well-spent $20.

While I recommend that you check out Super Baby Food for the full recipes, here’s my take on the basic grain cereal recipe that you can put in a container in the fridge and cut into chunks for portable, handheld baby food. Oh, and you can eat it too. :). I hope it brings a bit more mom freedom and happy, well-fed babies!

A little bit of freedom ——-> this way.

WHOLE GRAIN “STICKS” FOR BABIES

Ingredients:

Whole grains (brown rice, oat groats, millet, or any other dry cereal grain)

Method:

Place up to 1 c dried whole grains into the dry hopper of a Vitamix or high-powered blender or food processor. Process on high for several minutes, pausing periodically to scrape down the sides with a spatula, and/or let the mixture cool off for a minute before grinding again. Stop when the mix becomes a fine dusty powder and there are no larger chunks. Store in a glass jar in the fridge for up to one month.

For one batch:

MIx 1/4 c (4 tablespoons) powdered grain mix and 1 cup water in a small saucepan. Cook on a low setting while stirring frequently for ten minutes. It will seem like the mix is drying out. You can add a tiny bit more water, but keep in mind the more water you add the more runny (less stick-like) the final result will be. Keep stirring and cooking—you want the grains to fully absorb the water and get cooked. After ten minutes you can serve it up (it will be hot!) or put some or all in a container in the fridge. When cool, slice or cut into chunks or blobs to serve.

More grains please Mom!!!!