Making and freezing baby food is far easier then you probably imagined, and the food you produce is far, far better for your baby than buying the vastly inferior stuff they sell on store shelves.

The first foods for babies

If your baby is just ready to start eating solids, start with 1 or 2 tablespoons of steamed or baked vegetables daily.

Recipe for freezing vegetables

1. 1. Use fresh vegetables. It’s best is to obtain them in season from a local source and organic.
   2. Steam or bake them. Don’t fry or toss in oil.
   3. Freeze the baby food in clean ice cube trays. Pop them into the freezer covered with a plastic bag or waxed paper. Later you can remove the frozen cubes and store them in plastic containers or freezer bags. If they stay frozen they won’t stick together. They will keep at least three months, possibly much longer. Make sure you label the containers or bags, and NEVER heat them up inside the plastic because:
      • Plastic releases xenoestrogens (like BPA) and phthalates that mess up sex hormones and cause cancer.
      • Store food in plastic as little as you can. Use ceramic or glass containers instead.
      • In the freezer however, plastic does not shatter like glass, and the chemicals are less likely to travel into food when the plastic is frozen cold. Warming accelerates release of the chemicals.

Recipe for Freezing Baby Food from Leftovers

For the next type of food to introduce, use small quantities of your normal table food. An example would be baked sweet potato. See a schedule for introducing foods to baby.

1. Place left-over food from your table in ice cube trays.
2. Cover with waxed paper held on with rubber bands or inside a plastic bag and put in the freezer
3. Heat food on the stove top, not in the microwave.

Microwaving damages the nutritional value of foods much more than regular heating on stove-top.

Observe the baby’s reactions

After giving a new food, always wait a day or two before introducing another new food so you have opportunity to observe if the food is tolerated. This is the way we test for food allergies and food sensitivities in babies.

Selecting food for your baby

From about 6 months, the focus is on introducing low allergy and easy to digest foods. If you’re breastfeeding, there’s no need to rush at this point. Breast milk is fine as the entire diet until the baby is nine to twelve months old.

People who feed a newly eating baby should follow the child’s lead, learning to recognize their signals. Interpret resistance to a food is a sign it’s not time yet for that food.

Once a food is accepted and you know it’s tolerated, just feed the baby what the family is having, as long as it has already been introduced to the baby. You can spice and season the food just as you would for yourself, as long as the baby wants and tolerates it.

Baby’s food should be fresh, ideally local, organic and for animal products, pastured and grass-fed. Organic food eliminates many poisons commonly included in growing and processing foods, as well as dangerous and untested GMO foods. Pastured and grass-fed animals (and eggs) eat a better diet and are healthier food with better fats. And local, small farms tend to be much cleaner and more careful sources of food than the factory farms producing most food these days.

Jarred, boxed, canned or otherwise packaged food is of low nutrient value, devitalized, old and processed. Just as you would not make a regular habit of eating packaged foods for yourself, your baby should not be fed such things.

The abundance of packaged “baby foods”, even in natural food markets, is merely a device to increase food companies profits. These foods are NOT nutritious. Avoid them.

You can also view a video on making and freezing baby food.