Pumpkin

During the month of September I checked the grocery store every time I went looking for a pumpkin to make pumpkin baby food for Ella. Pumpkin season fell perfectly for me to make pumpkin as a baby food for her. As the beginning of October rolled around, the pumpkins appeared in the stores. I grabbed one up the first time I saw them. As usual, I read about how to make the pumpkin on www.wholesomebabyfood.com. I did, however, buy my pumpkin prior to reading on the website. The website recommends buying a smaller pumpkin, sometimes called a sugar or pie pumpkin. Although I bought the wrong type of pumpkin, I plowed ahead.

I figured that the pumpkin would be cooked similarly to the butternut sqaush - and I was right. After removing the seeds and strings, place the pieces fleshside down in a little water in a baking dish, and bake at 400° until the skin puckers up. Sounds pretty simple, right? Well, it might have been simple if I had the proper knife for breaking down a full size pumpkin, but I don't. It took me quite a while to get all the pieces cut apart, and separated into several different dishes (I think I had to use 4 different baking dishes to get all the pieces in the oven at the same time). Even though it was difficult to break the pumpkin down, the result was definitely worth it. Once baked, the pumpkin flesh is easily removed from the pumpkin skin. I pureed most of the pumpkin, and froze it in the ice cube trays. What I didn't puree, I cut into small dices for Ella to eat as finger food once she got a little older. I froze small servings of the pumpkin dices in packages I made with Glad Press 'n Seal.

The two best parts of making the pumpkin:

1. Ella loved it.
2. I got to roast fresh pumpkin seeds for myself. I LOVE fresh pumpkin seeds roasted with some butter and salt . . . yum :)

A Harder Test: Cherries

Over the past few week we traveled quite extensively, and I didn't want to go to all the trouble of bringing my homemade food along for our trip, so I purchased some Gerber stage two packages for Ella. Stage two foods are so much more interesting than the stage one, mostly because many are combos of different foods. One package I picked up was a cherry applesauce. Ella LOVED this combo, so when we got back, I decided I would make a cherry puree for her.

I read up on how to do the cherries on www.wholesomebabyfood.com, but things didn't quite work the way they were described on the website. First, I had to remove the pits from the cherries . . . according the website, I could depit the cherries by using the end of my vegetable peeler. So, I'm standing by the stove "removing the pit" from my cherries. Or, so I thought. (Did I mention that I'm pretty unfamiliar with cherries??) My husband walks by, and says, "You know you aren't taking the pit out, right?" I'm not?? What do you mean I'm not taking the pit out? My husband breaks open a cherry and shows me the pit. I'm most definitely not removing the pit with my vegetable peeler. I try to dig deeper with my vegetable peeler, but it really isn't working well. I decide I'll cut around the pit with a knife. This is really not working well either - sure, I'm removing the pit, but I'm also wasting a good bit of cherry in the process. My husband starts breaking the cherries open with his hands, which works, but is an incredibly messy process. I dig in again with the vegetable peeler, and I finally figure out I can get the pit out with the tip of my vegetable peeler, but this is also a very messy process. By the time I've depitted all of the cherries, my hands and clothes are stained purple (thankfully, I was wearing old clothes, and it washed off my hands easily).

Whew! I finally got the cherries depitted. That was A LOT of work . . . the most work of any food I've made Ella so far. Now I'm off to stew my cherries in a bit of water (which www.wholesomebabyfood.com suggested as a possible method) before I freeze them. After I stew them for a bit, I blend them up in my food processor, and they are SO liquidy. Apparently the cherries had enough juice in them, and I did not need to add water when I cooked them a bit. My mixture is so liquidy that I decided to reduce the mixture on the stove. After reducing for a while, it is much thicker, and much more appropriate for baby food. Finally, I move the puree into ice cubes to freeze. I was worried about the puree after everything that I had to do with it, but Ella loved it, so I guess that's all that matters!

Test 2: Butternut Squash

Earlier this week I decided I'd make the butternut squash I picked up. Once again, I checked out the recommended cooking methods on www.wholesomebabyfood.com. I sliced the butternut squash in half (which was not an easy task - I think next time I'll wait until my husband is home and get him to do it for me), scooped out the seeds, and placed the halves of sqaush in a glass pan filled with about an inch of water. I baked the squash in the oven for about 40 minutes, until the skin puckered up, and the flesh was easy to remove from the squash. I scooped out the flesh into my food proceesor, added a bit of water, and within a couple of minutes had a big batch of butternut squash. I portioned the sqaush out into the ice cube trays, froze it, and removed the frozen squash a couple of days later. Getting the baby food out of the trays was a little tricky at first, but I figured out that a steak knife around the edge of the cube works well. The cubes defrosted nicely in the fridge. I picked up some Rubbermaid Easy Find Lids (x-small) to use as baby food containers. They are a great size - I simply put a cube in the container and defrosted in the fridge overnight. So easy!

Ella LOVES the butternut squash. She likes it a ton better than the apples, which was encouraging to me, since she didn't like my first attempt at baby food that much. :)

Test 1: Applesauce

Yesterday I picked up several different fruits and veggies to make into baby food for Ella. I got apples, squash, carrots, avocado, and bananas. I plan to simply mash the banana and the avocado up when I'm ready to feed her as these don't require cooking. As for the other fruit and veggies, I plan on cooking them, freezing them in ice cube trays, and storing them in the freezer until I'm ready to use them. My plan is to make a bigger stash of each fruit or veggie so I don't have to make the food too often.

I started with the apples today, mostly because I figured they would go bad quicker than the squash or carrots if I was a little slower in getting around to converting them into baby food. I read up on how to prepare the apples on www.wholesomebabyfood.com, and I decided I would boil them until soft, blend them in the food processor (with a little bit of the cooking water to thin it out a bit), and then freeze the puree in individual one ounce servings in the ice cube trays. It was SO incredibly easy! The hardest part was definitely peeling the apples. The whole process, from start to finish, was also really fast. I thought it might take a long time for the apples to get soft once I started cooking them, but they ended up only taking a few minutes. Once the apple purees are thoroughly frozen, I'll pop them out of the ice cube trays and into a freezer ziplock bag for easy access down the road.

I was slightly disappointed in the amount of applesauce I was able to get from my apples. I used four gala apples (I think - maybe it was five - I should have paid better attention), but it looked like a pretty good quantity in the pan. Once they were cooked and pureed, I only had enough applesauce to fill up one ice cube tray and then one small serving for Ella to eat tonight. I was expecting twice that amount. Oh well, I'll know for the next time I prepare them! Perhaps next time I'll bake the apples to try a different technique. Overall, I'm very pleased with the ease of making the applesauce.

The Food Processor

I'm using this new venture into baby food to get a little something for myself: a new food processor. There may be some of you out there reading this now thinking that I don't really need to invest in a new one and that even a blender will work fine. While this may be true, I'm still using this as my opportunity to get a new food processor. We got a food processor when we got married; however, it has mostly collected dust on our pantry shelf. There have, however, been a few times we've pulled it out and on one of those rare occasions my husband did something (I think dropped the lid) and cracked a vital piece of the food processor off. It works fine as long as what I'm using it for isn't too watery, but if it is watery, I'm in for a big mess! We've been cooking a lot more at home lately and I've been needing to use the food processor more these days, so I'm looking forward to using one that doesn't cause a big mess!