After waking for the day, we took a little drive to Babies R Us. I've really wanted to start making all of K's food myself. There's something extremely rewarding about knowing I took the time to cook and mash her food instead of popping open a jar. Not to mention the fact that it costs half as much to make her food as it does to buy the jar in most cases. Anyway, I'm on a rabbit trail. Our trip to Babies R Us was to buy some kind of food storage for freezing baby food in 2 ounce servings. Walmart had the Baby Bullet storage system for $19.99 but it only came with 6 containers. I had researched Babies R Us and found a 12 container system for $13.99 online and planned to buy that one after finding nothing at Walmart that would work (aside from the Baby Bullet). Once we got to Babies R Us, I found the store brand set that had 16 containers for $10.99. I bought two of those with a bunch of labeling stickers, came home and got straight to work. Today, I made 12 (2 oz) servings of carrots and apples, 6 (2 oz) servings of pears and 10 (2 oz) servings of sweet potatoes. Tomorrow I'll make some peaches.
Once I finished with the baby food, I started my freezer meals. I'm starting with just two of them to see how much I like it. It sounds amazing. Assemble ingredients in 1 gallon sized bags, freeze, dump in the crockpot in the AM and eat it in the PM. The great part about it, so far, is that I spent the same amount of money at the grocery store this week as I usually do but the two freezer meals I chose actually make 4 dinners so I'll have two dinners for a future week (or two). This week, I made Teriyaki Chicken and Lime Chicken with Black Beans and Corn. I found these recipes here:
http://www.ringaroundtherosies.net/2012/02/freezer-cooking.html
and here:
http://www.ringaroundtherosies.net/2012/04/more-freezer-cooking-meals-part-3.html
The Lime Chicken with Black Beans and Corn actually calls for cilantro but I can't stand the stuff so I left it out. Hopefully, removing it doesn't ruin the meal!
I finally organized the pantry and cleaned out the fridge. It really needed to be done. Remember in grade school when you wanted to organize your bedroom so you dug through the recycling, found cardboard (pasta, cereal, etc) boxes, cut them and glued paper on to them? No? Oh, maybe I was the only freak that wanted separate containers on my dresser for all of my things. Rabbit trail again... I had a point which was that is basically what I did. With the potential of the hubs separating when his enlistment is over in a year, I'm on a mad budgeting and squirreling spree. I wasn't about to run to HomeGoods or Ikea or even the Dollar Store to buy containers when I had a huge pad of colored paper, some good old Elmer's and lots of recyclables waiting to disappear. It might not be the prettiest of pantries but it works and it works darn well. I can actually see everything in there right now! I have things that I can use in the future for dinner that I never would have thought to use since it required digging to find them!
And, finally, dinner. After getting in one last nap, of course. Pork chops. We planned for steak but the choices at the store were less than awesome while the pork chops looked amazing. It doesn't hurt that pork chops are cheaper than steak, either. I browsed Pinterest and found this:
http://www.kalynskitchen.com/2008/05/grilled-pork-chops-recipe-with-soy.html
Which sounds amazing, right? Only, I have this issue with following recipes and I didn't have 4 hours to marinade the chops so I tweaked. My version was delicious, though!
Salt and Spicy Grilled Pork Chops1/2 cup water
1/2 cup soy sauce
Juice of 2 (juicy) limes
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp oregano
1/8 tsp cayenne powder
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 boneless, thick cut pork chops
Place all ingredients, except pork chops, in a gallon sized ziplock bag and swish it up. Using a fork, poke holes all over both sides of the chops. Place chops in the bag, lay them on their side in a container and squeeze the air from the bag before zipping it shut. Marinade for 2 hours in the refrigerator before grilling to desired doneness.
If you're not a fan of spicy, you may want to just use a sprinkle of cayenne or nix it altogether. The 1/8 of a tsp, leaves a nice heat.
Mmmmmm that looks SOOO yummy!!! I love how easy you make that sound too! Now I just need to get a grill that my husband will actually grill on. hehehe
ReplyDeleteHow do you make K's food? Like, how do you get the apples and sweet potatos to a mashable consistency - just boil? :/
It depends on what I'm cooking.
DeleteCarrots - Wash, peel and chop (or use baby carrots and just wash). Steam until they can be mashed. Put them through them through the food mill. Mix with water/breast milk.
Sweet potatoes - Wash, peel and chop. Boil, covered in water, until they're starting to fall apart and put them through the food mill. Mix with water/breast milk.
Apples and Pears - Wash, peel and chop. Boil in a small amount of water (does not have to cover them. You're basically making apple/pear sauce) until they're mushy. Put them through the food mill. These also do not have to be mixed with liquid, they'll be liquidy enough on their own.
Bananas - Allow to super-duper ripen. Peel (obviously. haha), cut up and put them through the food mill. These don't have to be mixed with liquid of any kind.
I haven't tried the peaches yet but I plan to let them get super ripe, cut them and then cut the peel away from the peach before running them through the food mill. I'll let you know how that turns out. I assume they wont' need to be mixed with fluid. I also plan to do something with spinach, some green beans, peas, zucchini, squash (both yellow-summer and butternut), mango and pineapple in the near future. I'm going to wait until she's a year old to try strawberries since it's a pretty common fruit allergy and at least a year for kiwi since I'm allergic to it.
I have this food mill. The consistency is adjustable by adjusting how tight the crank is. I don't think an expensive baby-specific blender is a necessity, this works just fine for us:
http://www.target.com/p/nuk-fresh-foods-food-mill/-/A-14014884#?lnk=sc_qi_detaillink
I think some people use a blender but the blender took forever to get the food to the right consistency. I thought the food mill was actually easier than the blender. We have the Magic Bullet and it's supposed to be great for baby food but I still found the food mill to be easier and, ironically enough, faster despite having to mash it bit by bit. It goes through pretty quickly if it's soft enough and you only have to put it through once.
You can add liquid before or after freezing your baby food. You can use water or breast milk to thin the food. Don't use previously frozen breast milk to thin baby food if you plan to thin the food before freezing it. Breast milk should never be frozen, thawed and then frozen again. You can use thawed breast milk to thin baby food you plan to use immediately, though.
This is a good read, too, if you plan on homemade. A lot of people start solids around 4 months (we started rice cereal at 5 months). I waited to give her homemade solids until 7 months out of nitrate-paranoia. Probably overprotective but I'd rather be safe than sorry!
http://wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com/nitratearticle.htm
Oh, I always use purified water, too. I figure if the water bottled and marketed for use in formula and baby sippy cups is purified by reverse osmosis, there may be a reason. Especially since baby tummies are so sensitive and their small bodies are much more vulnerable to issues from high levels of minerals. I feel better knowing that the water she gets has no chemicals or minerals, just H2 and 0. We have the Zero Water water filter system. It's better than Brita and the quality of water you get after the filter is similar to water purified by reverse osmosis. It's pretty inexpensive for us since we drink the water from the filter, too.
Deletehttp://www.zerowater.com/