Thrifty Thursday - Baby Food

So, why is a lady without a baby, who's trying to save money, writing about baby food? She's not. I have been really busy this week, so my dear Sis, offered to write a guest post for me.

All of these thrifty Thursdays posts, brought to you by my lovely sis, have been an inspiration to me but, since I don’t have a blog of my own, I’m sharing my thrifty experience as her guest this week.

Becoming a new mommy while also buying/renovating/moving into a new house at the same time (not highly recommended) can drain the piggy bank pretty quickly. And, as any parent knows, babies are expensive. Who knew that in the first three weeks we would go through approximately 300 diapers? DS is now nearing 7 months and, while using less than half the number of diapers, is happily eating 3 “meals” a day. It’s so exciting the first time you go into the grocery store to buy baby food. Just like it was so exciting the first time you bought diapers (until you realize that you just went through 100 of them in one week). You go into the grocery, head for the baby isle, find the beginner foods and then choke when you find out that the jar of strained peas costs $0.75 (at least it does here…maybe it’s different other places that aren’t connected to the rest of civilization via a one-laned bridge). At first it’s no big deal, a teaspoon here and a tablespoon there. But soon it’s a jar here and a jar there and a screaming, crying baby if it doesn’t come fast enough or if it’s pears instead of the peaches that DS wants. So, for this week’s thrifty Thursday post I decided to make baby food and share my experience with you.

First, applesauce is applesauce, whether you buy it in the baby isle or elsewhere. They are exactly the same thing. I like to buy the snack packs (unsweetened of course) because it’s unsafe to feed a baby anything that’s been in the fridge for more than 3 days. Better safe than sorry. Although I must admit, sometimes the leftovers don’t make it back to the fridge.

The next thing I tried was sweet potatoes. Anything like squash or potatoes are easy to make. You just wash them and then bake or roast them (with the skin on to keep all the vitamins in) and then mash or blend them up. I blend mine still, mashed makes DS gag. If you need to add water to thin it you can. Then, I fill an ice cube tray, cover it with saran, freeze and then pop them out and into a freezer bag or container. The cubes that come out are about a tablespoon, maybe slightly more. At supper time I just take one or two cubes out and defrost in the microwave. This saves a ton of money and he likes them better.

Sweet potatoes were one sale for $0.79 per pound. I bought ~0.9lbs (3 potatoes) = $0.68

This made one tray of cubes. My tray makes 16 cubes or 8 meals. 8 meals for 0.68.

That’s the equivalent of 4 jars at 0.75 = 3.00

After my sweet success I may have got a little overly ambitious. Peas, I thought, I’ll make peas. I brought water to a boil and steamed them for about 10 minutes until they were tender.

Blended them up.

Added a little water.

What more could DS want than freshly cooked peas….

…ok, well, maybe he’s not ready for homemade peas yet. But I still have the sweet potatoes. Any suggestions on what I can do with 16 ice cubes of pureed peas?