Homemade Baby Foods

After many months of no posts, finally a few minutes to get back to recording a few of the things we have been doing over the past few months. It has been a busy few months with moving, having a baby, and the holidays, I was most often in a Daze. But life is starting to fall into a more consistent routine, if such a thing exists, and we feel a bit more settled in our new home. Today I am going to share something I have been working on over the past few weeks as our new little one is starting to love solid foods. At first she protested, but now she loves everything we are feeding her. There is no doubt that jarred baby food is expensive, crazy expensive, right up there with formula. I have always breast fed my babies, but I have always bought the jarred baby foods to introduce them to solids. This time I decided to try my hand at making my own. It is so easy, so inexpensive, and really quite yummy! I have enjoyed sampling them all. Check out how simple it is:

Choose your fruit or veggie.

We have done bananas, strawberry- banana, mixed veggies, sweet potatoes, carrots, and broccoli. Cook your veggies until soft. I steamed most of mine.

Place your fruit and veggies in your super awesome blender.

 We are so happy with our Blendtec that we purchased about a year ago. It is amazing, but you could go with any type of blender or food processor.

Add liquid to get things rolling and to obtain desired thickness. My liquid of choice was breast milk.

Pour or Spoon (depends on the thickness) into ice cube trays.

Freeze!

 Once they are completely frozen they pop right out if you stick a knife down the edge. Don't let them sit out long or they thaw and precious bits stick to the bottom. Pop them right out and put them into zipper bags or your freezer container of choice.

Homemade Baby Food

To serve I just pull out a couple of cubes and heat them for about 30 seconds in the microwave. A few of the thicker ones, like my sweet potatoes, I add a bit more liquid to thin them out. Baby girl, loves, loves, loves them. We now have a stock pile in the freezer and we continue to add more variety day by day. I plan to do some fruit and veggie combos, like spinach with bananas, etc. The possibilities are endless.

Cool huh! Now let's look at a cost comparison:

Homemade VS. Store Bought Baby Food

Homemade Carrots - 4 oz. = $.09

Store Bought - 4 oz. = $0.63

Homemade Sweet Potato - 4 oz. = $0.31

Store Bought - 4 oz.= $0.63

Homemade Bananas - 4 oz. = $0.10

Store Bought - 4 oz. = $0.63

I think you get the idea. Super cheap, super yummy. I think even if you bought organic fruits and veggies you would save some money. Plus you know what your baby is eating and it can be super fresh, think of putting all those garden veggies you are going to grow this spring to work helping your baby to grow healthy and strong.

In the near future I will be posting about how to can homemade applesauce. We did a bunch this fall and I even canned some for baby girl with no sugar added. It turned out super yummy. Not only does she love it so does the rest of the family. 

Mom's Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

I am a bit slow at posting this, but as promised I wanted to show you what I did with what was leftover from the Whole Chicken that I roasted last week. I was pretty tired on Sunday night and I didn't want to deal with the rest of the chicken that night so I stuck the leftover meat in a bowl in the fridge and then I just took my chicken carcass and drippings and covered it with saran wrap and tossed it in the fridge for the night. This actually works well because in the morning it is very easy to skim off any unwanted fat. Mine didn't have a lot because I had removed most of the skin from the chicken before roasting it.

I dumped the whole carcass and drippings into a big stock pot along with everything else I had roasted my chicken with and then added enough water to cover my chicken well. You can add more carrots, celery, and onion if you like at this point and you may want to if you are going to freeze or can the stock, but I didn't because I planned to use it right away for soup.

Bring your stock to a boil and allow it to simmer for several hours. When it is done simmer strain out the chicken and other bits, leaving only the stock. I love using my stock pot that has the colander that fits inside of it for this because when it is done simmering I can simply lift it out of the stock.

When you are done simmering you should have something that looks like this. You know you have good stock when it has a rich yellow color to it. It should also smell and taste very chickeny.
Save your chicken carcass to the side and let it cool while you work on cutting up veggies for your soup.

My Mom's chicken soup always had carrots, celery, and potatoes in it. I loved it! It was my favorite meal that she made. One thing that I add to my soup is sweet potatoes. They really make it yummy! I don't really know amounts to tell you. I just chop and dump stuff in. But I had a large stock pot and pictured to the right is what I put into my soup.

About 5 large carrots, 4 stalks of celery, 5 medium sized red potatoes, and 2 medium sized sweet potatoes. Peel them, chop them, and drop them into your broth. Bring it all to a boil and then let it simmer until your veggies are tender.

While your veggies are cooking tackle your chicken. Take your cooled chicken carcass and remove any remaining chicken.

Mine didn't have much left, because I had removed most of it the night before. On the plate is what I removed from the carcass and in the bowl is what I had removed the night before.

Overall I ended up with quite a bit of chicken left over though. I dropped all of it into my yummy soup. But you could also make a smaller pot of soup and only use half of the chicken and use the other half in a casserole or enchiladas and then you get three meals out of one chicken. At this point it is really easy to stick the chicken in a freezer container to be used for later if you want.

Take your homemade noodles that you made earlier - find out how here- and drop them into your boiling soup. 

Let your noodles cook for about 20 to 25 minutes. You can see how they all float up to the top as they get cooked. At this point your soup is done and ready to enjoy!

Mom's Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

Here it is hot and delicious! It really is my favorite winter time meal.

 Now just a few things I wanted to mention in case you want to make this delicious soup without using a whole chicken. Any type of chicken on the bone will work. But remember that it is the bone that makes the broth rich and delicious and imparts that wonderful chicken flavor. So boneless skinless breasts will not cut it. But you can use thighs, wings, drummies, breasts, or a combination. A whole cut up chicken works great. You don't need to roast the chicken ahead of time either you can just dump it into your stock pot and allow the chicken to cook in your stock water, and remove the meat from the bones later. I will often do it this way and then divide the cooked meat up into several freezer containers for future meals.

Even if you are not going to make soup this is a great way to cook your chicken for other meals, because you can make a stock by adding carrots, celery, and onion to the water you cook your chicken in and then you can can or freeze the stock to be used later. I use tons of chicken stock and it is very expensive to buy in the can and is loaded with salt and preservatives. Much healthy and yummier to make your own!

I promise to do future post on canning and freezing stock. I use several methods depending on what I want to use it for.

That is all for now, I hope you enjoy making and eating my favorite meal of all time! Thanks mom, for teaching me how and always making this for my birthday when I was a kid!

A Winter Favorite: Italian Farmhouse Soup

Italian Farmhouse Soup: Winter Vegetarian Favorite

A few weeks ago we had some friends for dinner and I made this wonderful winter favorite. We absolutely love this soup. It is hearty, warm, and delicious. Give it a try, you won't be disappointed.  I am sure it will become one of your favorites too.

Italian Farmhouse Soup

2 Tb. Olive Oil
1 Onion, Chopped
2 to 3 cloves Garlic, minced
3 to 4 Carrots, peeled and cut into large chunks
6 oz. Rutabaga, peeled and cut into large chunks
7 oz. Turnips, peeled and cut into large chunks
2 Quarts, canned diced tomatoes
2 tsp. Oregano
2 tsp. Basil
1 tsp. Thyme
1 tsp. Salt
6 & 1/2 Cups Vegetable Stock
1/2 Cup Dried Small Macaroni
1 - 14 oz. Can Red Kidney Beans, drained and rinsed
2 Tb. Italian Flat Leaf Parsley, chopped
Salt and Pepper, to taste
Freshly Grated Parmesan Cheese

Heat the olive oil in a large pan, add the onion and garlic, cook over low heat for about 5 minutes until softened. Add the carrot, turnip, rutabaga, tomatoes, herbs, and salt. Pour in the stock and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover and allow to simmer for about 30 minutes or until veggies are tender. Add the pasta and kidney beans to the pan and simmer for about 5 minutes until pasta is tender. Remove from heat and stir in parsley and add salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot with freshly grated Parmesan cheese on top.

After we discovered this amazing soup we started growing Rutabaga in our garden. It is so delicious! We also usually have turnips growing too, but if you don't have either of these just use whatever root or winter vegetables you have available.

I didn't have any turnips when I made this batch. So I threw in a small butternut squash and a large sweet potato, along with my rutabaga and carrots. It turned out awesome! So yummy! Served with homemade French Bread, it makes the perfect winter time meal.

Sweet Potato Harvest

This year's sweet potato harvest.

A month ago we harvested all of our sweet potatoes.  We love sweet potatoes in our family.  This was our first year grown them.  We started them from slips early in the year.  We harvested over 11 lbs, though we would have had more but about half of our slips were planted far to late.  We only started these from two sweet potatoes, we also gave away a bunch of slips.  Unfortunately some of the slips were quickly overshadowed by other larger plants and did not produce much. 

Sweet potatoes are very nutritious and store well.  After what we learned this year, we will be starting a whole lot of slips next year.  We'll plant them everywhere.

All in all it was a great success., below are some highlights from what we learned.

• Sweet potatoes really prefer a lot of sunlight.  The slips we planted in the shade of a fence and those that were overtaken by tomatillo's or tomatoes did not do well.  
• We planted a lot too late which limited our production.
• Planting them as part of a polyculture increases production
• They grow well in many types of soils, even very poor soils
• They can fill in many gaps in your garden beds
• Once you establish a them, you can continue to propagate them from starting slips from your harvest.
• You can also bring in some vines and over winter them. 
• Store bought sweet potatoes won't always produce slips, try for some locally grown ones.
• Start your slips early, get them in early  

Slips are very easy to start and each slip can grow several potatoes each.  They are very hearty once established, we had some that produced a lot of pretty sweet potato blossoms which is unusual. Honeybees love sweet potato blossoms.

This was a long one, it would have been huge with a little more time.

Another long one, this is almost 3 feet long!

Sweet Potato Blossoms

Sweet Potato Blossom

Our Sweet Potatoes have had a couple of blooms these last couple of weeks.  The blossoms are very pretty and are not very common.  In fact propagators who try to cross various breeds have a hard time with the blooms and have try to force them to bloom.

So my first thought, "I want to collect the "true seeds" they will produce, and then next year just plant the seeds rather than starting slips ".

It turns out that if the bloom becomes pollinated its seeds if planted will not be true to parent, or will grow "junk" tubers.  Just like if you plant the seeds from an apple core you may end up with 1 in 100 or 1 in 1000 that makes a good eating apple similar to it's parent.  This is why apples and so many other plants are propagated with cuttings, grafting or in the case of sweet potatoes, slips.  For now I will stick to growing my own slips for sweet potatoes, but I will enjoy the blooms when they come.