Apple puree

As I mentioned, I plan on making baby food for our not-so-little Moose. Today was Round 2, after I made a batch of peaches for him last week only to discover that he, apparently, will not eat them. (Crazy, right? What kind of human doesn't like peaches?)

Today I made apple puree, because I know he will eat apples. Using my handy Baby Love cookbook and trusty Blendtec blender, it only took about 20 minutes with peeling the apples being the longest task.

Truth be told I really didn't need a cookbook. It's so simple and straightforward, so I'll show you (and show off) what I did:

First cut, core and peel the apples. I used three for this batch. The genius trick to coring an apple, explained in the book, is to cut it in half and then use a melon baller to dig out the core. It's easy, quick and gives you more apple in the end.

Put the apples in a pot and add water, about 2 ounces per apple. Turn the burner on high, put on a lid, and cook for 5-10 minutes. The apples should be soft but not mushy.

Pour everything into the blender and blend. If there's not enough liquid, add a little more water or apple juice.

Pour the puree into an ice cube tray. When it cools, wrap the tray and put it in the freezer.

There are a couple things you can do to store the food once it's frozen that are all really convenient. You can leave them in the tray until you're ready to use each cube, or you can transfer the frozen cubes into baggies, empty baby food jars, or any other little container.

To thaw, just put one of the containers into the fridge the night before you want to use them. If you're on the go, you can put a container with the cube still frozen into your diaper bag (thanks Toni for this tip). By the time your baby is ready to eat it will be thawed.

TA DA! Nutritious, fresh, preservative-free baby food!

Another great thing about making baby food is that if your baby doesn't like one item, as we experienced, you can use it in other things. For example, I now use the peach puree in my green smoothies, or you could put pureed broccoli into broccoli cheese soup. Because the food is from fresh produce, it still tastes really good. But you don't have to take my word for it:

Moose Baby Evan likes it so much he eats it off the bib when we're done!