Batch Freezing and Storing of Baby Food

Baby Claire is eating so happily. Looking at her size, you know that she really loves her food.

Do you know when Baby Claire was approaching 6 months old, I was really anxious on what to feed her? Lots of questions was in my mind like how can I even cook nutritious home-cooked food for her when I am at work? How can I offer her a variety of food to test whether she has allergic reactions to these food?  How can I store and cook organic food for her since organic fruits and vegetables perish faster than non-organic food?

Then I came across online of the concept of batch freezing food. Before I go into the details, I guess now my readers must be wondering whether about the nutritional value of food after freezing. I visited a couple of sites and almost all recommended freezing food when it is at its freshest rather than cooking the fruits and vegetables after leaving in the fridge for days.  An example of such site is here.

What Benefits?

• Save time, Save money, Serve Baby Claire with VARIETY of nutritious food. Last week, Baby Claire succeed tested her allergy against butter, cheese and also button mushrooms.

Store for how long?

• As recommended by Wholesomebabyfood.com, it is recommended that frozen food is to be consumed within 3 months. For us, we will try to consume within a month. Partly, because our small fridge only can store that much of food :P. We will cook and batch freeze baby food every 3 weeks, during the weekends when Justin Papa is around. I can't imagine doing this alone, so much chopping, steaming, cooking and storing. However, the benefits outweighs the tiredness especially when we see Baby Claire loves eating them. :)

Once you have cooked your homemade baby food, it is important that you freeze it immediately. Below contains the different storage methods which we are currently using.

Conventional Ice-cube Tray storage

The easiest and cheapest way to do this is by using ice cube trays with a lid. I bought them from Daiso at only $2 each. There are 2 different sizes. The smaller one holds around 1 oz or 30ml while the other holds around 40 ml. Fill each individual cube with baby puree and freeze. You can then put the lid on once the food has cooled down. The next day, we will remove them from the tray and put them in freezer bags (I double sealed with another zip lock bag) and labelled them.

 

Special Food container

This food container comes in handy when you freeze chunky or chopped fruits and vegetables. There are reusable BPA plastic baby food containers/pots which are easily available in most baby shops. I bought "Baby Cubes" from Mothercare.  They come with trays and allow me to stack these trays up which save space for my fridge. 

To store bigger amount of food E.g. for a meal, we use the Avent VIA Cup. This is really convenient for my FIL who just need to reheat the food using the bottle/food warmer.

Here’s a list of essential equipment for cooking and freezing large batches of baby food, some of which you probably already own:

• Philips Avent 2-1 Steamer and Blender. This site, "My Wok Life" gave details on how to use this useful equipment. It is good for making puree and it preserves most of the nutrients as the water used to steam the food are blended together.

• Electrical Steamer with multiple trays (Normal steaming pot serves well too). We use this steamer when we want to steam chopped food. It was a gift for our housewarming from my university friends. Now it really comes in handy. :)

How long do you steam the food?

Below contain a snapshot of the Avent Philip Blender guide on the steaming period. Hope this may be useful to you too :)

Here contains some examples of her meals.

Macaroni with mushroom, pumpkin, salmon, coriander in chicken stock.	Potato with zuchinii with chesse and lightly cooked with butter.
This is her oat cereal with mango.

It is always exciting to watch Baby Claire enjoying her meal and wanting for more. :)

Cheers,

Deariebear Mommie