I think I’m going to go for the homemade baby food. I’d still like to wait until Ben’s 6 months, I don’t think he’s ready now and he really doesn’t show any interest in food. I did however want to do a little reading to try and figure out if it was feasible and how much work I’m getting myself into. Turns out, it doesn’t really seem that hard. I bought this book with a gift card and it seems it’s really as easy as steam, throw in blender, dump in ice cube trays, move to ziploc bags for freezer storage. If you do large batches of stuff you can make a lot of ice cubes (1 ice cube = 1 ounce = 1 serving) and get stocked up.

Ben’s pediatrician is on board, she’s the one who mentioned that jarred baby food is really just a convenience item. It’s there in your cupboard and you can grab it easily, no effort put in. Jars run about 50 cents each, but I have a feeling that just like diapers, that could really add up. Hopefully I’d only be doing the whole baby food thing until he can handle the food we eat, just shredded into smaller pieces. Plus, we had SO MANY extra vegetables from the garden last year that we were giving them away.

Now about cancer in the state of California…

The book is great about explaining what foods to introduce during what months, what vitamins and nutrients they provide and how to best prepare the fruits and veggies. One of the things you can do is steam in the microwave (we already do this anyway), easy, right? Well, apparently you’re not supposed to use plastic wrap for steaming in the microwave as it contains toxins that can leech into your food when heated. Ok so, no plastic wrap.

Then I found myself surfing around the great unknowns of the internet (big mistake) and read that really, you’re not supposed to use any plastics in the microwave. Even Tupperware has a disclaimer that when heating in the microwave, their products are only rated to be used on 50-70% (medium) power. Any higher and the plastic starts to break down (I’m assuming at the molecular level) and can leave some nasties in your food.

And THEN I read a bunch of places that microwaves themselves are evil. This is where I start to raise an eyebrow. The plastics breaking down thing, ok I can buy that, but I’m not entirely sure my microwave is slowly killing me. Maybe only if I lived in California.