Moving past the purees

So, hubby and I make the boys' baby food. We really like it and take some sort of strange pride in it. But I think they might be getting ready for more. They're biting everything, and they mash up fruit in their mesh feeders really well. I figured we'd start "mashing" foods instead of pureeing them in the blender as a start. But I also think some fingery type foods might be in order soonish (probably in a month or so, when they hit 8 months.)

Does anyone have any good ideas for ways to dice foods *fast*? Or can you dice up steamed veggies and fruits before hand to heat up?

What did you guys do at this transition?

We're not sure about the stars and biter biscuits and all that jazz - hubby and I already have enough problems with craving crunchy carby stuff, so we'd like to help the boys avoid acquiring that taste so early.

 

when we started moving to diced veggies i steamed them in larger chunks and did a rapid chop with a standard 10" chef's knife to make small dices. you could also try a mandoline slicer or pulse with a chopping blade in a cuisinart.

 

When we started with finger foods, I would just cut up a bit of what ever vegetable we were having with dinner that night & then, if they finished that, I would cut up a bit of fruit of some type. I didn't really do much preparing ahead of time for finger foods.

 

A grater works well for things like apple or zucchini.

At that stage, I would make large batches of diced vegetables every few weeks and freeze them in cubes.. then when meal time came around a minute in the microwave and they were ready. When you introduce meat, you can put ground chicken or beef in there too.

 

The cheese grater is a *great* idea!!! That's exactly the trick I was looking for. I also might try one of those "slap chop" type tools.

We use 4oz and 8oz containers for their purees, so I think I'll keep doing that. At lunch, they split a 4oz and eat an 8oz between them at dinner. Breakfast is generally oatmeal with some fruit mashed in. (Man, that makes them sound like piggies! Lol) This works great for us, because I just take out the next day's meal from the freezer to the fridge when I feed them today's meal, and I can heat it up in the container it was frozen in. (We never tried the cubes, but I think it'd drive me nuts, since they eat so much anyway.)

We use these neat little Tommee Tippee snack containers, and for the 8ozers we use Ball freezer "jars" like this: http://www.amazon.com/Jarden-82000-Plastic-Freezer-Jars/dp/B000BOB4C8
I love all of these because they stack great in the freezer and pantry.

 

This is totally off topic, but I had to comment - Piccologirl, I'm also a Sara AND I played flute/pic in band for like 20 years! How neat!

Anyhow, I'm *terrible* at chopping veggies with a knife. My hubby made me get rid of our mandoline slicer after an unfortunate accident, but we do have a sort of "fry maker" veggie chopper that pushes veggies through a grid, so that might be a good bet, too.

What's everyone's opinion on having a standalone steamer versus just doing it in the microwave? We eat a *lot* of veggies, and I'm thinking having a steamer might be nice to free up the microwave during dinner prep. Loss of counter space, though.