YUMMIES FOR THE TUMMIES

I celebrated my first Mother's Day this year!  My gift from my mom, my mother-in-law and Chris was a Beaba Babycook (all in one steamer/blender) with a wonderful baby food cookbook, silicone freezing trays and baby spoons.  I was so excited when I tore off the Williams-Sonoma wrapping and immediately wanted to try it out!  OH, WAIT!  Our babies were only a month old!!  So, I put it on the shelf and patiently waited until it was time to introduce our boys to solid (pureed, really) foods.  Well, the time has come & I've been workin' that Beaba and making big batches of fruit & veggie purees for the boys.  I now know that it takes three steam cycles to cook an entire butternut squash, baby carrots cook just fine when put in whole & the entire unit is a breeze to clean.  I love it!  It's much easier for me to do a few steam cycles and have easy clean up than to break out a big water pot, steam basket, lid, spoon, blender w/ food processor attachments, etc. and clean it all once I'm done.  Plus, it uses MUCH less water.

The boys have liked everything they've tried so far: rice cereal, oatmeal cereal, avocado, butternut squash, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, green beans, sweet peas, carrots, prunes, pears, bananas and today we're trying peaches!  I've been feeding them two or three times a day, usually every other feeding time during the day.  So they get just a bottle in the morning and then the next feeding is a bottle and solids - then just a bottle, and so on.  Soon we'll introduce apples and we're going to practice with water in sippy cups.

Here is what the process looks like with the Beaba:

Butternut Squash

Sweet Potatoes (since I baked these & had four to puree at once I used my larger food processor)

Four sweet potatoes makes A LOT

A whole lot!!

Avocados (my favorite!)

Pears (this might be worth buying at the store! this is FOUR pears!!)

And then it goes in the freezer so we can have ready to go meals in just the time it takes to defrost (in the steamer of the Beaba!!)

Once frozen, the cubes go into plastic baggies so I can easily take as much as I need at a time out to thaw.

Besides the fact that I love to cook, and therefore really enjoy making these yummies for the boys, it really saves a lot of money when you think about how many servings you get for the cost of your fruits & veggies!  I haven't done the math (I failed geometry & didn't enjoy other math classes that I barely passed!!) but just one Gerber or Earth's Best serving is around .70 cents (a little higher for organic) and I'm guessing our servings are about .30 cents or less!  Awesome.  Thanks you three for such a great gift & useful tool.