Buying Baby Food

We just recently added a 3rd meal and I'm having a hard time making sure I buy enough baby food to get us through a whole week. We just started Stage 2 foods & I add cereal most mornings, although they're not really thrilled with it. We're not on finger foods yet & I don't make any baby food because I am culinary impaired! Here's what we do...

Breakfast = 1 jar each of fruit plus some oatmeal each morning = 14 jars total
Lunch = 1 jar each veggie plus one jar fruit to split = 21 jars total
Dinner = 1 jar each veggie plus one jar fruit to split = 21 jars total

Total = 56 Jars!

When I added up the number, I was totally shocked! Does that sound reasonable to the rest of you? Or am I just crazy?

 

No, that sounds about right. Once your babies start finger foods, the amount jars will lessen!

 

Mine eat much less than that so it's much cheaper at least!

 

WOW.. you got some big eaters.. but I guess that does sound about right.. pricey huh?!

 

That sounds about right to me. We give our boys a mixed grain cereal, which they seem to like. We mix it with applesauce in the morning - which I buy whole large jars of instead of individual baby food jars (much cheaper!). I buy organic with no sugar added and it is the same thing as the baby food.

At lunch they eat one veggie and one fruit each (sometimes split the fruit, but usually eat a whole jar)

At dinner, I mix a veggie with the mixed grain cereal again. They are full and I don't have to give them 2 jars each. Sometimes I make their veggie for dinner. It is really easy and again - MUCH cheaper. I just buy a bag of organic carrots, green beans, etc. and steam/boil them in a small amount of water till they are soft. Then I put it in the blender with some of the water from the pot (the water has nutrients in it). You have to be careful not to overcook the veggie or you cook out the nutrients. My guys actually like this better than the jars, but it is time consuming so we do both.

Sarah

 

Mine get about three jars a day total, so it's much cheaper. They get yogurt or finger foods for the rest, so it's cheaper.

 

Mine are eating 3-4 oz. total for each kid per meal. That means we split a meat and a veggie jar or they split a stage 2 fruit and a yogurt. We also do cereal in the morning, but they always have fruit with it. They do eat some finger foods though.

 

This is our feeding schedule...

morning 8am - 8oz of formula
12 pm lunch- stage 2 fruit for each of them mixed w/ 3 tbsp of oatmeal, 4-6oz of formula
dinner 4pm- stage 2 veggie mixed w/ 3tbsp of rice, 4-6 oz of formula
before bed 8pm- 8oz of formula

so that's 28 jars of food a week. We are not to 3 meals a day yet though. I think once we reach that step, I'll be doing cereal and yogurt in the morning... my question about yogurt is do you have to wait to give them yogurt until they have tried regular whole milk??

 

QUOTE(Melissatwins84 @ Jan 11 2009, 06:20 PM) [snapback]1142362[/snapback]
This is our feeding schedule...

morning 8am - 8oz of formula
12 pm lunch- stage 2 fruit for each of them mixed w/ 3 tbsp of oatmeal, 4-6oz of formula
dinner 4pm- stage 2 veggie mixed w/ 3tbsp of rice, 4-6 oz of formula
before bed 8pm- 8oz of formula

so that's 28 jars of food a week. We are not to 3 meals a day yet though. I think once we reach that step, I'll be doing cereal and yogurt in the morning... my question about yogurt is do you have to wait to give them yogurt until they have tried regular whole milk??


My pedi let us give them yogurt a few weeks ago (they were on antibiotics & were having lots of stomach upset, so she thought the yogurt would help) and we haven't tried whole milk yet. They really liked the yogurt but my DD was up 2 nights crying & had bad diarrhea---don't know if it was from the yogurt or antibiotic, so we're going to hold off on giving yogurt again for a while.

 

We made it up to a whopping 77 jars a week before they finally got the hang of of chewing their food instead of swallowing it whole and choking. Luckily our local stores run 50% off baby food sales once in a while.

But like a pp suggested - we were able to move onto regular all natural applesauce in giant jars (no sugar added). I also started making all of their veggies. It's super easy to do potatoes and squash (in the microwave, then rice them which peels them and takes all the chunks out then add either water or a little milk a butter to get them to the right consistency) and we have a steamer that I do carrots all kinds of other hard veggies in. We also have a mini food processor that I put various fruits in. Before long I was making thicker, healtier, and fresher versions of most of the jar type foods and they loved them and I loved the $$ savings. Now they eat pretty much whaterver we eat which means I have to be more conscientious about what we eat (have to include more fruits and veggies), and have to have dinner ready at a much earlier time which has challenges of it's own.

I still keep some jars on hand and we still go through 10 or so a week for either things I don't make, or when dinner is running late, or I am just too exhausted to bother.

 

That sounds about right to me too. That was a primary motivation for me to start feeding them more finger food! It also helps when they start eating dairy -- you can mix a jar of fruit with a cup of plain yogurt, or give them cheese instead of half a jar of baby food, or whatever. You can also feed them regular organic applesauce instead of the jarred kind.

But yeah -- I had to devote an entire kitchen cabinet to baby food for a little while there.

 

Oh yeeks! Make friends with your microwave and steamer bags!!! That's what I do for veggies (no cordon bleu designation required!), and for the rest (and sometimes other veggies) I grind what we are eating to whatever consistancy is required. I have a teenager and a 50 lb. just turned four year old... I can't imagine spending that much on jarred food!

 

Sadly mine absolutely refuse to eat any kind of homemade puree, so it was never an option for us I still have jars of it in the freezer too...