DIY Baby Food
Making your own baby food is super cheap and easy. Before my son started eating solids, I started squirreling away food for him in the freezer. Basically you take a food, run it through a blender or food processor until it’s smooth, then store it until you feed it to a baby. It’s seriously that easy. I do have a few hints and tricks to make it even easier. I mean, of course I do. I couldn’t call myself That Clever Chick if I didn’t, could I? Well, not without shame.
Cooking:
To start off, you want to keep each food completely separate from everything else, meaning no apple banana blends until you make sure the kiddo doesn’t have a food sensitivity. I’m sure you’ve read all about this in your baby books, so I’m not going to go into exhaustive detail. So the first ingredients in your baby food will be just the food and probably some water.
I never peeled anything, like apples or pears, that I would normally eat the peel on. I did cook these things, rather than just blending them up raw, at least at first. Bananas don’t need to be cooked, but I think everything else should be. You can steam, boil, or bake your foods. For apples and pears, I cut them up into chunks and put them in a glass baking dish with some water. I put this in the oven at 350 until they were mushy. Wait until it cools to run it through the blender.
For first foods, whatever you’re making for the baby, you basically cook it until it’s mushy and will blend easily. So instead of steaming broccoli until it’s still crisp, let it keep going until it falls apart when you push on it. Once the baby gets a little older and is ready for more textured food, you can cook it a little less. Eventually you can just mash up what you’re having for dinner, and skip the blender altogether.
Tips:
Make extra of whatever you’re eating. Are you making broccoli for yourself? Make extra (without any spices or seasoning) for the baby.
Once you have the blender or food processor out, make several things at once. You can microwave a sweet potato, or just blend up some raw bananas if you don’t have anything else prepared for your little munchkin.
Rinse the container out in between batches until you’ve established what foods your baby is not allergic to. After that, run them through starting with safe foods, and ending with new foods. So you know your baby can have bananas just fine, but haven’t tried peas yet? Blend the bananas first, store them, and rinse the blender. Now when you run the peas through, if there’s a tiny bit of banana residue left behind, it’s no big deal.
Something too runny? Add a little baby cereal to thicken it up.
Too chunky? Try adding water, then blending it some more. Still not working? Run it through the microwave a bit to cook those stubborn bits.
Need ideas? Check out the baby foods at the store. They have quinoa and stuff in them! You bet I made some quinoa for my kiddo. I mix it in with fruit or veggies to add protein, and he loves it.
Storing:
I used normal ice cube trays to freeze the baby food into small, ~1 ounce portions. Once these were frozen, I popped them out and stored them in freezer bags. The food cubes fit into baby food jars, so you can just grab one, pop it into a jar, and then store it in the fridge or put it on the counter to thaw. They’re so small, they thaw pretty quickly. I got baby food jars from a friend who bought her baby food, but you could also buy your first few jars. You can also use Tupperware. Nothing says you have to feed your baby out of those classic glass jars.
Note: If you’re going to make baby prunes, soak them until they’re soft first. I destroyed my old food processor trying to blend them up too enthusiastically. Also, they DO NOT pop out of ice cube trays, so when making prunes, freeze them in small, individual containers. They stay sticky and never freeze solid. I haven’t tried other dried fruits, but I would take the same precautions with them.
I hope you’ll try this. It seems like there’s some special process Gerber goes through to make their baby food, but there really isn’t. Making your own is surprisingly easy, and cost effective. By my rough estimation, homemade costs half as much as store bought, if not less. Think of all the toys you can buy with the savings! Or something boring, like college savings.
Fresh Veggies with Quinoa
Back when I was still pregnant, I wanted some really fresh, flavorful veggies. Well I certainly wasn’t going to deny that craving, so here’s what I made:
I used the mandolin slicer attachment for my cheese grater, and damned if it didn’t slice up that zucchini real nice. I also cut up (the boring, old-fashioned way) about 1/2 a cauliflower and one broccoli crown. I sauteed all of this in olive oil, and used a ton of dried basil and a little garlic salt to flavor it. I cooked everything very lightly so that the veggies were still crisp.
I cut some grape tomatoes in half and threw them in just long enough to warm up. If you cook them too long they turn to mush, and you basically made a tomato sauce on accident.
I put this over some quinoa, but you could also use any kind of rice or pasta. You could also add some Parmesan or feta cheese if you like.
This was so healthy and satisfying, I wish I had a big bowlful right now!
Shepherd’s Pie
I’m a little behind on blog posts, so this is from a couple months back, but well worth the wait! A few months ago I had the perfect storm of mass cooking occur. I started by browning some hamburger, about half of which I stored to make beef stroganoff later.
I then added some cabbage, carrots, and onions I had chopped up while making three bean salad and raw veggies for snacks, all while keeping the kitchen clean. Cook the veggies to your desired cooked-ness. I like mine somewhat caramelized.
I used: about 1/2 pound beef (browned and drained), 1/3 head of cabbage (chopped), 1 carrot (chopped), 1/2 onion (diced), garlic salt and pepper to taste.
I then made a triple batch of this biscuit dough, one batch of which I smashed out for the topping on my shepherd’s pie.
Bake the whole thing according to the biscuit recipe, and you can even have the biscuits in the oven at the same time!
This type of strategy makes it so much easier to eat homemade food every day. I have a newborn at home, so BELIEVE me, I understand that it’s hard to find time to cook every meal. Get around it by prepping a bunch of stuff at once, or even cooking multiple meals at once.
Generic Breakfast Egg Sandwiches
This is another amazing idea I found on Pinterest. If you haven’t been on there, be careful. It’s addictive. If you ever wanted to make your own McMuffins generic breakfast egg sandwiches this is the perfect recipe.
Spray some baking spray into a muffin tin, and crack an egg into each muffin cup (or however many you want to make). Bake it at 350 for 15-20 minutes. These bad boys pop out looking just like this:
Well, I semi-scrambled mine. On hers the yolks were intact. These are the perfect size to fit on a mini bagel, with a little cheese!
The author of the recipe was pre-assembling whole sandwiches, wrapping them individually and freezing them for fast breakfasts during the week. She used english muffins also, but the eggs fit better on mini-bagels.
Here are my ideas (as yet untried) for variations that could be mixed into the raw eggs before baking: chunky salsa, cheese, diced onion, spinach and romano cheese, bacon or sausage bits, chorizo or soy-rizo, and sauteed mushrooms and onions. I would mix in ingredients that have low water content, so things don’t get mushy, but it seems like having it mixed in would make these so much easier to reheat.
She recommends reheating in the oven, but if you keep the bun separate from the egg, that’s not necessary. I just toast my bagel and microwave my egg for about 30 seconds on 50% power, or else exploding happens and I get teased.
Spicy Baked Lentils
You may have noticed that I like to cook a whole bunch of food at once to I don’t have to do it every night. The other day I washed and cut up 2 heads of cauliflower, and threw them in a baking dish with olive oil and garlic salt. Since the oven was already on and the cutting board was already dirty, I decided to bake some lentils, too. They were already cooked (the night before I made pasta, and since the pot was already dirty I threw a whole bag of lentils in to boil while we were eating dinner. Noticing a pattern?).
I chopped up the remains of a white onion, 2 raw jalapenos, and some red onion, for a total of 1/2 cup of large chunks of onion.
The laready cooked, refridgerated lentils, fresh out of their tupperware:
Yes, that’s a Star Wars cup in the background. I mixed the ingredients in the pan to avoid dirtying extra dishes.
I added 3 tablespoons or so of olive oil to moisten it up, 1/4 cup good parmesan cheese, and probably 2 teaspoons or less of garlic salt. You can make it spicier by adding chili powder, or Sriracha. Once it was done cooking, we each added Sriracha to our own portions to control the level of spiciness. Hubby like things way spicier than I do. You can make it vegan by leaving out the cheese or using a vegan cheese substitute. I haven’t tried those, so I’m not sure how it would work. You can also add some cumin for additional flavor.
I baked it at 350 for 30 minutes or so, until it was bubbling and a little crispy around the edges. The veggies had cooked a little bit, but they were still fairly crunchy, which I liked. You could always saute them before mixing them into the lentils if you want them more done, but I liked the variety of textures.
Best BBQ Chicken Ever
By “Best” I mean the ultimate combination of cheap, easy, and tasty (that’s what she said?) Buy chicken at the store. It can have skin and bones, and this recipe is great for breasts because it keeps them moist (oh my, this whole thing is spiraling into an endless stream of double entendres. You can play along by yelling “That’s what she said!” at the appropriate moment).
I de-skin the chicken, and chop up some onions in big chunks. The trick to this is the right bar b que sauce. There is no way I’m going to take the time to make my own, so I’ve tried a couple brands at the store. My favorite is Stubb’s bar b que sauce, if you’re lucky enough to live near Austin. They sell it at HEB. I love to rub Stubb’s sauce all over the breasts.
The other option, if you happen to live further away (which is fine because the city is full anyway; you’re probably better off where you are), is the Kraft Original bar b que sauce. Sounds boring I know, but it has the perfect blend of the flavors I look for, plus it’s fairly cheap for a large bottle.
I don’t have a grill, so we are baking these suckers to perfection. I usually spread a little sauce in the bottom of my glass baking dish with my finger, then lay the chicken on top. I throw in the chopped onions, and pour more sauce over everything. I usually make a whole bunch at once, then eat the leftovers for lunch later in the week. I bake the pan for at least an hour at 350, sometimes turning pieces over to keep things moist.
When I’m packing up the leftovers, I pour all the excess juices over the meat in the containers. This keeps the meat nice and moist for whenever I want it. This is a great recipe for when you have a bunch of stuff to do, and just want to put something in the oven and ignore it.
So how many “That’s what she said!” did you end up with? I counted 5, or 5 1/2, depending on your interpretation. If you found many more than that, you’re probably trying too hard. Have fun with your meat! (6).
Happy Thanksgiving!
Since you got a bonus post yesterday, which you undoubtedly utilized today for your Thanksgiving feast, and you’re probably about to slip into a carb-coma, (and I’m probably not far behind), and the frights of the holiday shopping season are not quite upon us all yet, I decided to write a little post. The end.
Just kidding! As I’m sitting here, Hubby is begging me to go make some chicken salad. Yes, MY Hubby that hates all poultry loves my chicken salad. It’s one of the recipes I like because it’s easy, and has laziness built in. I’m going to get it started, then come back and pass my wonderfulness onto you minions. I swear, you must be the luckiest minions ever to exist.
I start off with chicken breasts. I don’t get the boneless, skinless ones, because they cost way more. It only takes a minute to rip the skin off, and since we’re making shredded chicken, the bones don’t matter. I did a very early post about shredding chicken, and making soup, but I’ll just reiterate here. Since my only goal is to make chicken salad, this will be a bit simpler. Remove the skin from the chicken, put it in a pot of boiling water, cook until you can easily pull the meat off the bones with a fork, of course playing video games in the meantime. Once you can pull the meat from the bones easily, take the chicken out of the water and set it on a plate to cool. Play more video games.
Once the meat has cooled, I rip the big chunks off the bones, and use a knife to cut it into smaller pieces. I personally don’t like cubed chicken in my chicken salad, but whatever floats your boat. I do put cubed chicken into soups, because it’s less labor-intensive than shredding everything by hand. For this, I take the smaller cubes and shred them into a tupperware.
**At that second, I heard my pot boiling over and raced into the kitchen to prevent a mess. Obviously, I was way too late, and the water had put out the gas burner, plus coated the stove. I turned off the burner, and scooped out about 4 cups of chicken water. Let that be a lesson to you all not to over-fill the pot, especially if you plan to be 40 feet away from the stove while it’s cooking. This thing is called “My ATTEMPTS at Cleverness” for a reason, people.**
The other day, I was shredding a bunch of chicken at once, and decided not to make the chicken salad right then, but I didn’t want the shredded chicken to dry out. I stirred mayo and ranch dressing into it, and put it into the fridge that way, planning to add the other ingredients later. It worked out well, because the chicken soaked up a lot of the dressing, and was flavorful, and moist, even though it’s all breast meat.
Once you have your chicken shredded, chop up some celery and mix it in with the chicken, ranch and mayo. Ranch dressing gives this stuff more flavor than plain mayo. You can add some garlic salt and dill as well. The other thing I like to add is cooked frozen peas. They make it even tastier. I usually just eyeball the amounts on all of the ingredients, and taste it several times along the way. If you can, add the celery and peas at the last minute. This will help the celery stay crisp, and prevent the chicken salad from getting watery.
**Yep, just had to race into the kitchen again, swearing the whole way. You’d think taking about half the water out of the pot would help, but no. Now I have the lid off and the heat down some. I’ll be heading in there to read at the kitchen table in a minute so I can keep a closer eye on the death-chicken.**
This recipe is also a great way to use up leftover turkey from Thanksgiving. You can eat it by itself, in a sandwich, in lettuce wraps, or on top of a salad. While the chicken is boiling, I have one chicken breast in the oven for myself, and a butternut squash for dinner. If it weren’t for all my overflow issues just now, I would be one smug chick, with all this multitasking going on. The dryer is going, and I even gave the dog a bath today! I am awesome, other than the chicken water coating my stove, making the whole house smell like cat food a bit. And I was feeling so clever, too.
Pancakey Goodness!
You have all read my constant ranting about avoiding carbs. Every once in awhile, like on our wedding anniversary, I think it’s probably okay to splurge. Chocolate chip pancakes were our indulgence of choice one Sunday morning.
The best pancake recipe I have ever used is the one on the side of this powdered buttermilk container.
You can find it at HEB and *shudder* Wal-Mart. It is super fluffy and delicious. Throw some chocolate chips into the batter, and you are in yum town. You can also use fruit instead, or eat them with good old fashioned syrup.
This is a double batch. I usually make a double batch of pancakes, then put over half in the freezer. When I want one later, I just put it in the toaster, and they are as good as fresh. I usually make them small enough to fit in the toaster to make that easier.
Heart pancake for my sweetie! It didn’t look as much like a heart after it was cooked, but it tasted great anyway. The other trick I learned to make super fluffy pancakes is to sift all the dry ingredients together before adding the wet ingredients. I don’t have a sifter, so I throw them all together in a bowl, and stir it with a fork or whisk. These are so good I promise you’ll never have to waste another dime at IHOP! Buh-bye sticky tables, hello pajama time!
Stuffed Squash
During the time of year where veggies are fresh and cheap, I try to cram as many of them into my diet as possible. I use this method to rationalize Ramen noodles and hot dogs the rest of the year. Yellow squash was on sale the other day, and they were nice big ones, so I decided to make stuffed squash, a recipe from my dear sister, Beans.
Wash the squash, cut the tips off both ends, then cut them in half long ways. Hollow them out with a spoon. I then lay them out on a cookie sheet to be filled in a minute.
To make the filling, I browned a half pound of ground beef, and drained it. I then added some raw, diced onions and let them brown. I then mixed in a drained can of corn, and about a cup of cooked (from frozen) peas. I mixed in somewhere between a 1/4 to a 1/2 cup of tomato soup, and added some garlic salt. At this point it tasted fantastic, so I was done. I then filled the squash (3 squash total for 6 halves), and sprinkled some cheese on top. I made sure to get cheese onto the necks of the squash so they wouldn’t be flavorless. I baked the whole tray of them in the oven at 350 for maybe 45 minutes. Just cook them until the squash are soft.
Ta da! Super delicious! I’m still trying for a variation of this recipe that is vegetarian, but also tastes good and not weird. I tried quinoa once, and it did NOT work out. You can substitute all kinds of things in this recipe though, just as long as it tastes good with squash. Happy nomming!
Pie!
There are always occasions where people get together, and you’re expected to contribute food. Pot lucks with family, work or friends always put the pressure on to make something, if not impressive, at least palatable. And I would never stoop so low as to bring something, uck, store bought. Pies are super easy, and come on, who doesn’t love pie?
The other day, I made two at once, one mixed berry, and the other peach mango. I bought pie crusts at the store. It was a buck for a two pack, and that is definitely worth the mess it saves in my kitchen. I bought two of them, and you’ll see why in a sec.
I did have to hunt through the freezer section to find ones that were the least broken. Now one crust will obviously be where you put the filling. The other one will go on top to be the top crust. Tricky, right? You have to cut vents in the top crust so that steam can escape during baking, but I’m not the type of chick to cut boring slits, now am I? I wouldn’t be That Clever Chick, and I wouldn’t have such an enthralling blog, would I? Lucky for you, I AM That Clever Chick, and your eyeballs are currently being caressed by my magnificence. You’re welcome.
I used a star cookie cutter to make holes in what was soon to be the upper crust. You could use any kind of cookie cutter, but you should try to use a small one, and make sure there is lots of crust between the holes so the whole thing will hold together.
Once you have the filling in the bottom crust, gently lay the upper crust over top, and pop it out of its pan. The crusts I used said to perform this step while the were both still frozen, and that worked for me. I then let the whole thing sit for about 15 minutes for the upper crust to thaw, and flatten out. I then pinched the edges together and baked both pies at the same time. See? Batch baking!
Both pies tasted great, and the crusts look a little beat up because there were very few unbroken ones at the store when I went. They were still super cute, and filled my, and several friends’ bellies.
Now about the fillings. No I didn’t forget, I just felt like doing the post this way. Well, maybe a little of both. Anyway, I used berries I had in my freezer for one of the pies. During this time of year, when strawberries and blueberries are ripe and cheap, I usually can’t resist picking up a tub or two. Hubby and I rarely eat them before they get to that, if-I-don’t-eat-them-this-second-they’ll-be-trash stage, so once they get a bit soft, I freeze them. I happened to do the same with a mango earlier this year, assuming it would end up in a smoothie.
For the berries, I basically let them sit out and thaw, drained out the excess water, and stirred in about a quarter cup of sugar. Fruit is naturally sweet, so you don’t need to add lots of sugar. For the mango peach pie, I used a regular can of peaches I had on hand, I cubed the mango, and even threw in a couple strawberries. I drained the peaches, then tossed the fruit together in a bowl with a bit of splenda (instead of sugar). The mango added lots of sweetness naturally, and made the peaches taste more interesting.
I happened to make a pie yesterday, along with my strawberry chocolate cake, for an event held here at my place today, which will spawn at least THREE blogs posts! I can hear you squeeing from here. So the pie yesterday was planned to be just peach, but I had more strawberries in the freezer and room in the pie crust, so I mixed them in, still frozen. I also added about 2 teaspoons of cinnamon and vanilla extract, each, and again, about a quarter cup sugar.
When the pie was almost done baking, I took it out and brushed some of the syrup from the canned peaches on top, then sprinkled sugar on that. I then let it finish baking. The sugar stuck to the crust, and it was really tasty. As a matter of fact, I just finished the last piece. I think I will now nap, and watch the A-Team. Don’t I have the most fun ever??
Batch Cooking Recipes
I baked tons of veggies and meat all at once the other day, and made some beans in the crock pot. This fed me and Hubby for the week, and here are some of the recipes I made with all that.
I started by making a cup of instant rice, mixed in a cup of my beans noir, 1/2 a can of Rotel tomatoes, 3 slices of American cheese, and about a 1/3 of a can of refried beans. I also mixed in some garlic salt, chili powder and cumin.
Add a pile of veggies and some sliced tomatoes, and it was awesome. Healthy, fast, and delicious!
We simply microwaved and ate a bunch of the batch cooking for lunches and dinners for the week. I also shredded a bunch of chicken and made chicken salad, a pot of Mexican chicken soup, and a whole pan of chicken enchiladas.
When we got to the point when there were a couple tupperware of veggies left, I made a big casserole. It was like a broccoli rice casserole, but all kinds of veggies.
This is what you’ll need: 2 cups of instant rice, 1 can of cream of chicken, 1 can of broccoli cheese soup, and about 2 cups of shredded cheese, along with all the veggies.
Mix all that stuff together, but save at least one cup of cheese. Spread the mix into the casserole dish, and spread the last cup of cheese over the top.
And it was delicious! Cheese makes sure everything gets eaten!
My Attempts at Cleverness 
