Baby Food
If you have read my blog at all, you know by now that I try to read up on things and be aware of potential safety issues. I try not to be paranoid, but when you have a young child, it's hard not to be. My most recent discovery is that not all baby food may be safe. A couple of weeks ago I saw a link to an article about lead in baby foods. I expected it to be some off the wall brand of baby food that I would never consider buying and therefore I wouldn't feel the need to worry. When I checked it out, I was quite shocked to see that some of these baby foods that tested high with lead were popular brands that I would expect to be safe, like Gerber, Beech Nut, and Our 365 from Whole Foods. If you want to see a list of the foods and brands that had high lead content, you can look here. A lot of the foods on the list were fruit juices, which I plan to wait as long as possible before giving her.
Aaron and I had thought about making our own baby food, so this just pushed us to be certain about it. I didn't know it, but you can even make your own rice cereal! A co-worker told me how she does it by grinding the uncooked rice in a cofee grinder, putting 1/8 cup of the ground rice into about 1 and 1/2 cups boiling water, and whisking until the water is absorbed. This sounded simple enough so we started with some organic, whole grain, white rice. You could probably use any rice that you want, but the white seemed like the most basic to start with. You can do a google search for baby rice cereal and find lots of different recipes to try out.
We also bought an appliance for making baby food. It's called the Beaba Babycook Baby Food Maker. It steams and grinds baby food in one unit. We picked ours up at Williams-Sonoma, but I saw that Babies R Us has them online. Mom and Jeanne' saw it in the store and then I found out that my cousin and his wife use it to make food for their two daughters and really like it. We haven't used it yet, but I think it will make it convenient for us to make some vegetable and fruit purees for her now and maybe even some complete meals for her once she is a bit older.
Some people complain that by the time you buy all the stuff to make your own baby food you don't really save any money. That may be true, but I feel a lot better knowing that when she eats rice cereal it is really just rice and some breastmilk in it.
Aaron and I had thought about making our own baby food, so this just pushed us to be certain about it. I didn't know it, but you can even make your own rice cereal! A co-worker told me how she does it by grinding the uncooked rice in a cofee grinder, putting 1/8 cup of the ground rice into about 1 and 1/2 cups boiling water, and whisking until the water is absorbed. This sounded simple enough so we started with some organic, whole grain, white rice. You could probably use any rice that you want, but the white seemed like the most basic to start with. You can do a google search for baby rice cereal and find lots of different recipes to try out.
We also bought an appliance for making baby food. It's called the Beaba Babycook Baby Food Maker. It steams and grinds baby food in one unit. We picked ours up at Williams-Sonoma, but I saw that Babies R Us has them online. Mom and Jeanne' saw it in the store and then I found out that my cousin and his wife use it to make food for their two daughters and really like it. We haven't used it yet, but I think it will make it convenient for us to make some vegetable and fruit purees for her now and maybe even some complete meals for her once she is a bit older.
Some people complain that by the time you buy all the stuff to make your own baby food you don't really save any money. That may be true, but I feel a lot better knowing that when she eats rice cereal it is really just rice and some breastmilk in it.
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