Adventures in baby-food Making: Squash & Green Beans

Despite my previous post on how simple making carrots is, I have since learned Sawyer prefers the smooth pureed food that you find in the store. He still ate his carrots but made funny faces because there had little chunks. In order to get that pureed consistency, I need something besides my food processor (it only has chop & grind) and my blender is broken. My mom just bought a nice new Ninja blender, so I went over to her house for some baby-making fun.

SQUASH

The Squash was a fail….we only had a few small Summer Squash we bought at the Farmer’s Market and it just didn’t process very well. It was way too chunky and since there wasn’t enough “meat” it just couldn’t blend. 

just not enough to get the blender going

Next time, we will buy much more so it can blend better. For now he gets to eat the Gerber Organic baby food. He loves it!

If you do want to try making some, here’s how we did it:

Step 1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees

Step 2: Clean squash very well

Step 3. Cut off ends and discard

Step 4: Cut length wise down the squash

Step 5: Place seed side down on a non-stick cooking sheet

Step 6: Bake for 20-30 minutes (depending on how much you are cooking), check every 10 minutes or so and flip about half way in. Ours were soft after about 20 minutes but we only had 3 small summer squash

Step 7: Remove from oven and spoon out seeds.

Step 8: cut into small chunks

Step 9: Place in blender or processor and blend until pureed. (this is where we had issues)

Step 10: Divide into storage containers

GREEN BEANS

The Green Beans worked beautifully! Perfect texture and flavor, I could have eaten the whole thing.

Here’s how we did it:

Step 1. Clean beans very well

Step 2. Snap off both ends and discard

Step 3: Place clean beans in a pot of water

Step 4: Boil on medium for 30-40 minutes or until very soft

Step 5: Place in blender or food processor and blend until pureed.

Step 6: Divide into storage containers

Here is the Big bag of beans I got at the Farmer's Market

Breakin' it down

In case you are curious on how much money making my own green beans cost, compared to store bought…here’s the math:

Huge bag of green beans at the farmer’s market

$2 made 7 containers of food = 29 cents per container.

Store Bought Baby Food (Gerber)

$3.20 bought 6 containers of food = 53 cents per container.

Sawyer eats 2 containers per day, here’s how the savings adds up:

1 week of homemade: = $4.06

1 week of store-bought = $7.42

Total Savings per week = $3.36

Total Savings per month = $13.44

Total Savings per year =  $174.72

While that isn’t huge, I am sure he will up his amount of food, as he gets bigger. Also what impressed me was $174.72 equals about 816 – size 2 Pampers diapers at their current price at target.That is a lot of diapers!!