 Okay, so lots of people keep asking me how to make baby food. And now that I'm well rested and showered and my baby is like feeding himself with his hands, now I finally have the time to sit down and tell you what mistakes you should avoid when you're trying to make baby food in a Vitamix. One mistake people make is trying to add several ingredients all at once. Your baby needs to try one thing at a time to test for allergies. So make one ingredient blends and then you can always add those blends together later. The second thing is you don't want to make too much. Your baby is only going to eat purees for a few months. Ours ate purees probably for two or three months and then he was over it. He wanted more solid food. So I have a freezer full of frozen food that he's really not that interested anymore. So don't make too much when you first start. There's lots of different ways to prepare fruits and vegetables, especially if you know how to cook, you're a good cook, but for babies you really just want to steam them. So don't make the mistake of making some crazy preparation, just simple steaming that keeps most of the nutrients in. That's the way you want to go. Stick with a really smooth texture at the beginning. You don't want any chunks. I personally made this mistake with our baby. You want everything to be as smooth as possible at the beginning. Remember, your babies only ever had breast milk or formula up until this point. So if you're trying to give them a chewy applesauce mixture, they're not going to like it. It's weird. So as smooth as you possibly can, I even went further than like a baby food that you would buy at a store and made it as liquidy as possible at first. That really helped him kind of transition from breast milk to purees. With that being said, I added breast milk or formula if you want to the actual puree. That way, when he's tasting peas for the first time, he's also got kind of a familiar flavor, which is my milk, as kind of the background of that food. So it's something he's familiar with. It's more likely that he'll take it that way. Once you steam and blend your puree, the best and easiest thing to do is to put it into small ice cube trays. So I made the mistake of putting my purees into a traditional ice cube tray. First off, really hard to get out. Second off, way too big of servings for a four, six, eight month old. So I used the tiny silicone trays that you can pop out. I started with one cube, then he started eating two, then he started eating three. But the best thing to do is to freeze everything into tiny servings. And then you're going to pop those servings out the night before and let them just defrost in the refrigerator. That's the easiest way. So I would make a blend, keep a little in the fridge for that day and maybe the next day freeze the rest and then the night before pop a few out and defrost in the fridge. So when I put them in the fridge, I made the mistake at first of figuring I would just remember what I made. I didn't. I'm tired. I have a new baby and lots of fruits and vegetables are green. So I started labeling my freezer bags, peas. I made these in April, mid-April, whatever it is, so that I know what they actually are because eventually I'm going to start mixing those. I'm going to mix peas and pears. And so I want to know when I made them and what they are. The reason I want to know when I made them is that they only really last for about three months in your freezer. So you might make the mistake of thinking, oh, they're frozen. They're going to last forever. They kind of start to lose their nutrients and start to taste like freezer burn. So three months is about the amount of time your kid's going to want to eat a puree anyway. So it's a pretty good amount of time to freeze. So you might make the mistake of not taking them out of the freezer the night before, like every parent does. If that's the case, take them out, set them on the counter. And what I did is I put them in a little glass tray and I put hot water in a bowl under it. And it kind of re-steamed those frozen little nuggets. So in a glass jar, in a bowl filled with hot water, and it took probably five, six minutes for them to defrost like that. And if your baby is screaming and starving, it's okay to throw them in the microwave if you need to. Yes, the microwave makes them lose some nutrients, but just having food and some sort of sustenance is sometimes more important than having full nutritional palate available. Microwave it if you have to. Something I was told when I first started making baby food is that you should keep trying. Leni's sister Alana told me this, just keep trying because your baby might not like something 10 times and then on the 11th try, really likes it. This definitely happened with our kid. I gave him oatmeal over and over and over and over. Didn't like it, didn't like it, didn't like it, and then one day he just liked it and now it's kind of a staple of his diet. So just keep trying. They don't really know what they like yet. They're just kind of trying to figure it out. You're going to want to use the most fresh and seasonal ingredients you can. Go to the farmer's market, go to your grocery store, whatever it is. The more in season it is, the fresher it is, the more nutrients your child is going to get, but also it's a really good way to kind of challenge yourself to eat healthier too. You're not going to go to the farmer's market and pick up a bunch of fresh produce for your baby, steam it, blend it, and then go through the McDonald's drive-through. You're going to want to make yourself a fresh healthy salad or a fresh healthy soup because you're already doing the work of steaming some asparagus. You might as well have some asparagus for dinner too. One of the major, major benefits of making your own baby food is a cost savings. So you might figure, oh, okay, these packets, these pre-made packets are only about $1.50 each. That doesn't seem like a lot, but that really starts to add up, especially when your kid starts to eat more. So save yourself the money by making your own. Now don't make the mistake of buying a single-use appliance like a baby food maker. I'm sorry, these are silly. All these do is make baby food, which means unless you're going to have 15 kids, which God bless you, there's just no reason to have an appliance for one thing. The reason I have a Vitamix on my counter and that it lives on my counter is that it does everything. It makes my smoothies, my green juice, my soups, it does my chopping, it makes my baby food, makes my dressing, it makes my ice cream. It does everything and that's why it lives on my counter. You don't want to go buy a $50, $75, $150 appliance that's only going to be used for three months. I see these baby food makers on sale, used on all of the different platforms, almost always they say used a couple of times. If the larger container seems daunting to you using it for baby food, you can always grab the eight ounce cup. So that's this accessory, an eight ounce cup. I use this exclusively to make baby food because it's just the perfect size. So it comes with its own little blending adapter set here. The one trick with using this particular accessory is that you have to use enough liquid because obviously you can't use your Vitamix tamper. And once you're done making baby food in it, now you can use this to grind spices, to grind your coffee in the morning. I use this weekly, I would say, to make dressings. I don't want to make 48 ounces of dressing. So I use my eight ounce container to make dressing all the time. So quick note, this eight ounce container is only compatible with the Ascent Series models. So if you've got an Ascent Series, this will work perfectly. If you've got one of the older generation models, then you can still do this with the 20 ounce cup and the cup adapter set. It's obviously the same concept. It's the 20 ounce instead of an eight ounce, much more compatible when you're making baby food. And then you can use it for your to go smoothies. I really, really wanted to be an overachiever when it came to making my own baby food, partly because I knew you were going to expect a video like this from me. One thing that I learned is that my kid does not need to try every single fruit and vegetable. It's okay. My dog's barking. Hi Lucy. It's okay if he doesn't like papaya. That's okay. A lot of adults have never tried papaya. I needed to find enough things that he liked so that he was getting the rainbow, but without going overboard. So I really wanted to make sure that his palate was getting expanded, that he was being introduced to a lot of different things and that I was ruling out allergies. That was really important to me, but I did not need to feed him everything under the sun. With that said, once you start making some peas and pears and applesauce and Brussels sprouts and broccoli, you're going to be making all of those individually. Eventually you're going to want to mix and match. You can mix oats and bananas. You can mix peas and pears, which I already said. You can do sweet potato and carrot. Those are simple blends that you can put together. While you're doing that, it does not hurt to throw some herbs, some seasoning, some spice in there for them. So I don't want to eat plain oatmeal, do you? I put some cinnamon in there for him and that makes it tastier for him and also kind of introduces him to a new flavor. So when I did sweet potatoes, I made sure it wasn't allergic. Then I added a little bit of thyme. Then I tried a little bit of rosemary and that really helps them kind of get interested in an array of flavors. I think that kind of worked. He's 16 months old now and he really, really likes flavorful food. One of his favorite things is when I make chickpea and cauliflower curry for dinner. So it worked. I cooked dinner most nights. Even when I was exhausted with a newer baby, I still tried to make dinner a few times a week. When I'm making dinner for Lenny and I, the easiest thing to do is to pull aside some of the fruits and vegetables that I'm using for our dinner and just use those for baby food. I don't need to grocery shop specifically for, okay, I need broccoli and Brussels sprouts so that my baby can try those this week. They were part of my meal plan already for us to eat as adults and I just pulled some aside, steamed and blended those so that my kid could try them. With that said, I did a lot of that and I had a freezer full of stuff that my kid was kind of over at a certain point. Like I said, they last three months, but he was kind of over eating purees before that. So another trick that you can use is to throw those cubes of baby food back into your own smoothie. So I had a lot of sweet potato cubes that I would just throw back into my morning smoothie and that's a way to not be wasteful. Also, there are some baby foods that you don't need to blend up in your high powered Vitamix blender. We do a lot or did a lot of just bringing a banana with us. You can mash a banana with a fork wherever you are and that's a puree. Same thing with avocado. So they're wrapped nicely for you, a banana and avocado. All wrapped up, throw them in your diaper bag, grab a spoon and can I just make a suggestion and I am not a nutritionist and I am not a pediatrician. But introducing kids to high allergy foods the younger they are, I think at this point has been pretty proven correct. So give them peanut butter. Just make sure with every food that you're trying that you're really watching them closely. That's why they say give them three days, let them try it, have a reaction if they have the reaction and then you can really narrow down what it is. If you're on the fence about starting to make baby food by yourself, they say about four months, four to six months is when they start eating purees, start. If your baby is showing any interest in eating food, start. For us it made a really big difference with him sleeping through the night. He felt full, he didn't wake up for feedings, that maybe an old wives tale, they may not be connected at all, but it really felt like it worked for us. So start doing it as long as they're showing some interest, they can hold their head up, do it. If you do not have time to make your own baby food, you are not a bad parent. Go ahead and buy it at the store. That is okay. If you do have the time, if you have one Sunday where you can steam some stuff and you can throw it in the freezer, great. You can do a lot in a little bit of time. This isn't a complicated recipe with a bunch of different ingredients and steps. It really is buying produce, washing produce, steaming produce, blending produce, freezing produce. You can do all of that really quickly. It does not make you a bad parent if you don't do that. And if you're making your own baby food, you can supplement with store-bought baby food. We do this for a living and you will find baby food packets in our pantry. Sometimes you just need something quick. That's okay. A lot of my friends that are having babies lately text me and say, I want to start making baby food, give me all your tips and tricks. And I do and I share those things then I check in a couple of weeks later and I say, did you do it? And they say, no, not yet, I'm waiting. There is no right time. You're tired, you're busy. Just set aside a half hour and do it. It's important. Your kid wants to start. Do it. They'll love it. So with all that being said, here's the first five things that you should make for your baby. Oatmeal, cook some oatmeal, add some breast milk or formula or nut milk of your choice. Sweet potatoes, steam some sweet potatoes, blend them on up with some sort of liquid. Once you know they're not allergic, add some spices to them. Pears, really easy. With pears, I would still steam them. Remember that your kid doesn't have the digestion that you have, so steaming them helps them break those things down. Peas are an excellent one. They're sweet naturally, so kids like them. They're also packed full of protein. Pea protein is like the new big thing and you can get them any season in the freezer section. And carrots are something that kids almost always love. The only thing with carrots is they take longer to steam than the other vegetables do. One of the biggest complaints of parents that make their own baby food is that it's a little bit more messy. That is true. You're getting your blender dirty, you're getting all of your little containers dirty, and you're getting an ice cube tray dirty. That is totally true. You just have to commit to that. You have to commit to the extra few dishes every day. To me, it was worth it to not have to worry about additives and preservatives and all of that to wash a few extra dishes. You just have to agree that that's going to be annoying. You guys, it's really fun to look in your freezer and see bags full of baby food that you made yourself that are full of nutrition that are representing the rainbow. That is so, so fun to see. And it didn't take that much work. So if you appreciate videos like this, if you like hearing how to make baby food in your Vitamix, hit the thumbs up on this video. Definitely subscribe to our channel if you haven't already. And thanks so much for watching. See you next time. What if you have to feed your adult baby and blend all your food too?