My best friend's son has an 18 month old baby. Quite often, we eat together. Since all my grandchildren are in their teens or close to it, I enjoy watching the baby's dad feed him. As with most babies that age, he prefers to eat off his dad's plate than to eat food from a baby food jar.
Watching them, I remembered when my own son was about that age. My husband had recently been laid off, and we were really tight on money. I could not afford to spend the extra to buy pre-prepared baby food. On a visit to the local department store, I found a First Steps Baby Food Grinder. From that point on, I fed him homemade baby food, usually the same food we were eating. As far as I can tell, First Steps no longer makes this product, but other companies do.
The grinder I had was a bland white, easily stained when I ground homemade spaghetti in it. These days, Munchkin has a baby food grinder in blue or aqua. My favorite Munchkin grinder comes in a fresh feeding set.
The Munchkin Fresh Feeding Set comes with a food grinder and a fresh food feeder. The grinder allows you to grind any appropriate food from your table, while the fresh food feeder gives you the option to give your baby fresh fruit or vegetables without worry that your precious little one will choke. The grinder has a hand crank, so that you can even use it at a picnic or when the electricity goes off.
Over the years, there have been so many stories of contaminants in packaged baby food that I personally think it best to make your own baby food to feed the baby using the same foods you serve the rest of the family. When very small, you would probably want to remove a portion for the baby before adding spices. That said, when my son was little, he wanted the spicy foods. Whether we had spaghetti, pizza, enchiladas, he wanted to eat what we did. And he thrived on it.
In my opinion, baby food grinders are a necessity for families with babies.
Image credit: anitapeppers
My baby refused to eat food from a jar. If she didn't see it ground up in the baby food grinder, she wouldn't eat it. It did make her meals much easier and cheaper to feed her what the rest of us were eating.
ReplyDeleteBillySue