As you may or may not know, I make all of our baby food. Calista never once had baby food out of a jar as it was all home made. This time around, I have to make twice as much, and my old method wasn’t working as well, as I had to make new food too often. So I came up with a better way and wanted to share it with anyone who might be interested.
Previously, I would make the food and then store it in these great little baby food storage cubes from OneStepAhead.com. They no longer sell the ones I have, but it was a tray with ten 1 oz. storage cubes with tethered lids (they now come in a 2 oz size ad a tray of 8). I have two sets, so I could make 20 oz of baby food at a time.
The problem is that they boys are eating 2 oz each per sitting, so one tray only lasts me 2.5 feedings. I needed an easy way to make more.
What I did was I went to Bed, Bath and Beyond and bought two 12-packs of Wilton® Ultra-Flex™ Silicone Non-Stick Reusable Baking Cups. They were 7.99 per set, which was what I had paid for the baby food cubes I had from when Calista was a baby, but now I had 24 instead of 20, and these hold 2 oz instead of 1 oz. They are also dishwasher, oven, freezer and microwave safe. When I’m not making baby food, I can make cupcakes and muffins! A good deal, if you ask me.
Anyhow, these cups have a line on the inside to show where to fill to, and it so happens that when you fill to that line, you’ve got exactly 2 oz (trust me, I measured). So I whipped up a few batches of baby food — carrots, pears and sweet potatoes and filled my cups. Then I put them on a baking tray, like so:
I put the whole tray in the freezer for about 24 hours. When they were frozen, I just turned the cups inside out to pop out the baby food and put them into Ziplock Bags with the date on them.
I put the bags of baby food into my freezer and they take up no more space than a small bag of vegetables (there’s pears on the top right, and carrots and sweet potatoes on the bottom left. Pardon the rest of the mess).
Then it was time for the boys to eat, so I took out two of my handy 2 oz portions of pears and put them into a microwave-safe bowl.
I microwaved them for 1 minute, stirred, et voila! A perfect portion, ready to feed.
There you have it. Simple and efficient. I hope this will help someone else along the way!
Awesome!
OK, you are my hero!!! That is so cool!!! :)
Great idea Sommer! I didn’t know they made those cups, I’ll have to get some for my muffins, much better than the paper ones. :)
ok we are soooooo kindred spirits!! i did the same thing (made all my own baby food!) and i had those other cointainters too!! now i have to hope i can find a place that will ship those bad boys up here to canada! i love them!
kate is only 3 mos so i have a few months yet!
great job sommer!
Brilliant!
Sommer – What a great idea!!! Your pictures are beautiful! I have some of those cups already – now I just need a baby (or two! :-) ).
Kudos to you on making all of their food! I tasted some of the regular baby food and most of it was totally ghastly and had little protein if it was supposed to be meat…
One baby food I did like to make was pureed brown rice with sauteed chicken. I just sauteed small pieces of chicken until cooked and then mixed that with cooked brown rice in a food processor with enough water for a good consistency. It tasted really good (I think I added a tiny bit of salt) and DD really liked it! I could make a larger batch and have dinner for us (with more seasonings) too!
-Julia (jt_houston on Ovusoft)
Thank you so much for sharing
It will be very helpful ;)
I totally stole your idea! The ice tray idea didn’t work so hot for me, and I had TOO many of those little take’n’toss containers all over my house from when I made D’s baby food directly into those. I just picked up 2 of these as well, only thing I wish I picked up four because it’s slow going and I usually make more than 24 cupcakes at a time. Thanks for the idea, this worked awesomely!
Just wondering how long you can keep these in the freezer for?
Response from Sommer: You would want to use within about one month. :)
Sommer – SO glad to hear the silicone trays are working for you! I know it SURE made things easier for me!
Increadible!!! I cant wait to do this for my little guy (he is 11 weeks old)…can you tell me what you do when you go out and need to feed your little ones.. how do you heat up the food???
WOW! I would love to know how you are making your baby food. The ingredients, etc…