a project..

well, this post won't be interesting at all to some people, but i'm a mom now so sometimes (a lot of the time) i do mom-ish things.

i started feeding the rubes "real food" a few days ago.. which started with rice cereal and has now progressed to include pureed pears. SO i tried my hand at making her baby food.. which is something i'm excited to do for her (and for us because it saves a lot of money). so, i thought i'd share the process of my first attempt.

it started with me buying a mini food processor off craigslist for five dollars on monday. i had a very awkward interaction at a panera bread with the seller, but it was worth it.

i also used the book super baby food that was given to me by a sweet friend in california while i was pregnant with ruby. if you're at all interested in making your own baby food i would say to get this book.. i've heard from numerous moms that it's great, and it's helped me out so far.

next, i pealed the pears and cut out the hard center part and the seeds. the book tells you all about how to tell if certain types of pears are ripe or not and how old a baby needs to be before they can eat pears raw or cooked.. i don't think mine were quite ripe enough, but ruby seemed satisfied with the end result so i guess they were sweet enough for her liking.

i then cut up the pears and put them in the food processor to puree. i added a bit of water because the pears weren't getting thin enough for what i thought ruby would need. the book said to add a bit of citrus (if the baby is old enough) to keep the pears from browning.. i learned that this happens pretty quickly once they're pureed, but i wasn't really worried about it. it doesn't affect the integrity of the food for the baby, it just changes the color.

lastly, i spooned the pear puree into an ice cube tray. i heard this works really well for portioning (one cube = one tablespoon), and it also allows you to make a bunch of food at once and keep it for a lot longer than you could in the fridge.

once they were totally frozen i just popped the little cubes out and put them into a ziploc labeled with "pears" and the date.

i just can't believe my sweet little baby is now old enough for me to have to be doing something like making baby food. it was fun the first time though, and i'm looking forward to keeping this up and discovering tons of homemade baby food possibilities.

thanks for reading even if this didn't interest you at all. :)

and here's a picture of the little cutie just because.