With a little planning and a bit of pureeing, you can feed your baby with all the things he or she needs to grow with hardly any additional cost to your food budget. There are even some great seasonal foods to get you and your baby in the mood for fall flavors!
Autumn Appetite
Squash, sweet potatoes, and apples are all nutrient-rich ways to incorporate the season’s best fruits and veggies into your baby’s diet. Many squash varieties, for instance, are high in potassium, folate, vitamin A, fiber, and healthy carbohydrates.
Pumpkin, butternut squash, and acorn squash are all cheap and delicious food options for the whole family – prices can be as low as 50 cents per pound, and these foods peak through most of fall and winter.
Apples of all types are also a go-to baby food, and making homemade applesauce and other apple dishes for your whole family allows you to feed your baby with simple and tasteful dishes at almost no extra effort.
Other great foods, like sweet potatoes and yams, are also very easily made into baby food from either canned or fresh food.
Getting Started
If you want to make homemade baby food, you will need a food processor or high-quality blender that can puree foods to a very fine consistency. Picking foods that are smooth in texture when baked or cooked are the easiest and safest foods to make for your baby. Pay attention to age guidelines for certain foods and watch for any food allergies your baby may have.
Think about foods that meet these standards when doing your regular grocery shopping. Adding just one additional acorn squash or sweet potato to your list can provide several servings of baby food.
You may also want to consider investing in some baby-size serving containers to easily store and save the food you make (it is easier to make a lot and store it than to make a separate serving every time you want to feed the baby). Because the containers are so small, most of the food you prepare can be frozen very effectively.
Making it Happen
Get cooking! Bake your squash, make the applesauce, use canned pumpkin (not the pie filling, though!), or microwave your sweet potato. Mash or puree the food, store in small servings, and use when necessary!
If you realize while you are cooking something that it would make a great baby food, save a small portion and puree it after you finish – there is no sense in cooking something twice when you can use pureed leftovers to feed the baby, too.
Make an effort to buy one or two foods you can easily puree every time you go shopping, then serve them for the family and puree a portion for the baby. You may be surprised by how easy it is to do!
Fall Recipes
Here are two delicious and baby-friendly recipes full of this season’s best flavors:
Cinnamon Apple Squash:
- Cut acorn or butternut squash in half, remove seeds
- Microwave, bake, or roast squash halves until tender and very easy to scoop or cut out
- Puree squash chunks (without shell), adding a little water for thinner consistency if necessary
- Add ½ cup applesauce, unsweetened
- Add a dash of cinnamon and puree again
Squash ‘n’ Sweet Potato:
- Follow steps 1-3 above for preparing squash
- Bake, boil or microwave sweet potatoes (peeling and cubing first for boiling), peel or scoop out “meat” and add to puree
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