I wanted to write a quick post on making baby food at home- it's easy, it's yummy, and it's cheap! We fed Casper homemade baby food and are doing the same for Owen.
The idea is pretty simple: steam/bake/cook your ingredients, then throw it into a food processor (a blender would work, too, I'm sure) with water, breastmilk, or formula. Only use a little liquid at first and add it as you need until you get to a consistency that your baby can eat.
We use KidCo baby food ice cube trays, but you can use regular ice cube trays, too (that's what we did at first). We bought these at Babies R Us (we didn't have a lot of options for baby stores in Hawaii) and love them because they have lids. Each cube holds about a 1/4c of food (maybe a little less). After you put the food into the tray just freeze it and once frozen pop them out and place into freezer bags that are labeled with the food and date.
You can make as much food as you want at one time. I make baby food once a week or so and we end up with a wide variety of foods pretty quickly.
Below are sweet potatoes, but I have made broccoli, peas, mango, papaya, prunes (good for constipation), butternut squash, carrots... I haven't yet made any meat (usually we wait until they can eat finger foods and give them meat like that) but the idea is the same.
When you want to serve it, you can throw it in the microwave until the right temperature or you can thaw it slowly in the fridge. When we are going somewhere we will throw the frozen cubes into a small Tupperware and they usually are ready to eat by the time Owen is hungry.
If the food thaws and is really thin you can thicken it up to the right consistency with baby cereal, just add a little at a time.
We also give Owen large pieces of food/veggies that he can hold and gnaw on. It gives him something to do while we eat dinner.
