Things I Never Thought I'd Do...

So I think everyone ends up doing some things that they never really imagined they would ever do.  My latest thing to add to this list would be making homemade baby food.  Now I realize that sounds a little funny as my "baby" is 20 months old, but pureed foods tend to be the only way I can get Ann to eat fruits or vegetables (for how awesome she can be with food, she still has her quirks).  She also LOVES those pouches of pureed food (which, unfortunately, are EXPENSIVE!).  I finally did some research and found that you can buy reusable pouches.  I then looked around about making homemade baby food and bought some produce specifically for that.  I finally had time to get things made up yesterday.  Overall I'd say it went pretty well.  I just did a couple of small things to start out with.

I read about baking fruits, so I decided to bake some pears and peaches.  These are the pears after they came out of the oven (the peaches needed to cook longer).

Here's a sweet potato cooking on the stove

I also cooked up some frozen peas as well.  I combined the peaches and pears together, and then combined the peas with the sweet potato.  I got the peels off the fruits and blended them up.  I didn't even need to add any extra water, they were quite runny on their own.  I did, however, have to add a fair bit of water to the veggies though.  I poured the puree into some of my ice cube trays to freeze so they will keep longer.

The biggest test of success, however, was whether or not Ann would eat what I made.  I had a little extra of the pea/sweet potato mix that didn't fit into the ice cube trays I'd cleaned, so I poured them into some old baby food containers that I'd kept, and stuck them in the fridge.

Ann's been extra picky with what she'll eat while she's been sick these last few days, but I asked her if she wanted some peas last night at dinner and she said yes!  And she actually ate it!

She even smiled for me :)  I'd say it was a success!

Today I got the cubes out of the trays and put them into freezer bags to store in the freezer.  I had to let them thaw just a little in the fridge before I could get them out of the trays though.  This is the fruit mix

And my veggie mix!