Pregnant and Parenthood: Preparing and storing food for your baby

So today I decided to share my love of home cooking for Mia and share a few recipes, show you how to store your food easily and hopefully help anyone thinking about home cooking for their baby.

This post is by no means me preaching about home cooking over jarred baby food. It's completely your choice what you want to feed your child. I have not got the healthiest diet myself so I definitely can't say we only make food from scratch blah blah. We do not. But for Mia we do. We made the decision before she was born that we would cook everything fresh and try to avoid good high in sugar and salt. I simply want to help other mums out there who need some inspiration and ideas. Plus I went a little mad today and made a huge amount of sweet potatoes and carrots so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to write this post!

The first few months we started weaning I didn't give Mia any sugar or salt apart from sugar naturally occurring in fruits. This last month we have started to feed her what were eating but just a 'baby version' i.e. no salt, no chilli etc.

Ideas for meals

•shepherds pie - prepared how a classic shepherd pie is made, leave out the salt in the potatoes and use a low salt cheese on the top.

•white fish with mash and green beans - very simple and good brain food! Again cook without salt and ensure your fish is boneless.

• soup - there are many varieties you can make and it's so easy and healthy! It can be stored so easily and give baby some bread to go with it and its a great lunch!

• baby burgers - why not try to make your own mini beef burgers? We used lean beef mince mixed with some coriander and bread crumbs. We usually give these to Mia with some potato sticks we just simply cut a potato into thick strips and partially cook so try are soft enough to gum!

• chicken and sweet corn - Mia loves this. Simply boil your chicken and cook some sweet corn to go with it. We serve this with mash.

Preparing food

I like to boil or steam vegetables. If we are cooking meat in a pan we use as little oil as possible and try to use a light variety. Prepare lots in advance - I'm going to show you a great way you can store food in the freezer!

Sweet potato to last us around a month!

Storing

So you have cooked your food, in my case carrots.

I have some cut into small chunks which will accompany a meal and some in sticks that she can have as warm finger food.

Next you want to put portions into an ice cube tray.

This is sweet potato which I also made today.

These are great because you soon learn how much your baby will eat i.e. 1 cube, 2 cubes etc. This way there is very little wastage.

Once you have filled your tray you put it in the freezer until its frozen. Once it's frozen you pop the cubes out and put them in a freezer bag. Label the bag - usually 3 months is the rule for how long you have to eat it.