jar baby food

[sparky]

i notice a lot of people make their babies food in preferance to the jar food..

what apart from the financial benefits are the benefits in making your own purees?

TBH, i really cant be arsed making tonnes and have a small freezer so was just going to stick to the jar foods...the hipp ones seem to have no additives etc

 

[Manda&Thomas]

ive always used jar foods hun nothing wrong with them
i think i can get a huge variety for Thomas as we dont eat fish so i wouldnt cook him a fish meal so i just get it for him in a jar
same as cheese dishes i dont eat it so he wouldnt have it which is a shame but true,
if you eat a wide variety of foods and have the time and space to be able to do it then go for it but dont feel like you have to
xx

 

[daftscotslass]

I have a heap of food made up in the freezer for her because it's uber cheap and I know what goes in it. The rest of the time she has what we have but I want her to take a hot lunch to nursery a couple of times a week. I also made a big batch of stewed fruit to put on her porridge or for puddings - it cost me about £2 to make and that would have bought me about 3 or 4 jars. If you have a baby that's on one meal a day then it's fair enough but if I had her on 3 jars a day plus puddings I'd be well and truly bankrupt.

I don't find that our food bill is any more than it was before we had her (milk excluded) as she pretty much has what we do and meals I make up have all been stuff we had in the house anyway like pasta, mince, potatoes, steamed veg, fruit etc.

It's also encouraging me to eat better as well because I don't want to get into a situation where I'm sitting eating pizza or a takeaway while she has a much healthier jar of organic food. Monkey see monkey do an aw that

 

[sparky]

you need to get a mum and dad secret stash going, i only found my dads one 2 years ago! genius hid it in a ritz cracker tin...cos if you want something nice and sweet the last place you'd go its ritz crackers..

 

[daftscotslass]

One of my workmates (who's in her late 40s) sits in bed with a 400g bar of dairy milk every night when her kids are in bed. How she doesn't weigh 22 stone I don't know. She's a size 14, not fair.

 

[laracomps]

We do a real mixture. I had made loads for the freezer and then it broke, so I had to chuck then all out So she's going to be a jar baby for a few weeks until I do some more. She also had jars for about a month, a month ago as with the pnd I just couldn't do it.

I always buy her the HIPP ones, or the Plum ones. She likes both, and she also likes my cooking. I think its a good idea to get them to eat both.

Once she's been weaned for a few months, she can prob start to eat things that you do anyway

 

[ASD123456]

Nothing wrong with them IMO, I have made purees and frozen them for Rudy. He is supposed to eat them, but, I will usually start with one of my lovingly made purees, he will refuse to eat and we resort to jars. I also always use the pre made desserts, usually Rudy will hav boots organc fruit purree which is on special offer at the moment, 2 for some price (so you get 8 pots of puree)

TBH me and OH were talking last night and it seems that we might just use jars permanantly because it is a HUGE palava making and freezing puree. We've got a tiny freezer too. I also find he will get bored of the same puree and we add so many new foods each week that I'd need to be pureing every few days to keep up.

I can't wait until he can just have what we are having, that will be great.

so much for a jar a week, eh!

 

[sparky]

i've always found the most efficient way of doing things time-wise...not because i'm highly organised but because i'm naturally very lazy

Would be making the odd thing, and when she can eat our stuff happy days, but for variety's sake probably stick to the jarrs, hipp or plum sound good

 

[debecca]

Cooking yourself is great because:

1. You feel like a smug modern day Annabel Karmel.
2. It's cheap.
3. You can fill the freezer chock full of STUFF and not worry about her/his meals for yonks after.

Jars are great because:

1. Babies have a knack of hating the meal you've just lovingly cooked in your role as Annabel - especially if you've just frozen 543924 portions.
2. By the time you've bought butternut squash and tonnes of veg/fruit/baby pasta you wouldn't normally buy you may as well have bought a bl**dy jar!
3. There's no room for junk like Pizza and Ice Cream in your freezer because it's full of those chuffing Brother Max food pots containing unidentifiable orange or green gunge.

The one real down side with jars that I've noticed is that the colouring in them stains more so Connie often has a yellowy red tinge to her face after a meal with them. Also they make the bowls very greasy to wash up. Anyone else noticed this?

Anyway I compromise and try to give Flod one homecooked and one jar per day. Jar when I'm ultra busy or she's being fussy.

 

[sparky]

thanks for that entertaining and honest reply!

i need room in the freezer for vodka

 

[ASD123456]

i need room in the freezer for vodka

Same here

 

[laracomps]

Bex u summed it up to a T.

How I hate it when I make tonnes of stuff... it takes hours, then she spits it in my face LOL.

Oh and in terms of lumpiness. She eats them fine now, but it did take a little while. When moving to stage 2, I found the Plum pots much better than Hipp as they are 'textured' rather than big lumps of pasta

Ooo Ooo whilst I remember, Ella's kitchen have just started doing stage 2 too. Phoebe loves them ones! And they do a Fish Pie... only fish dish I've got her to polish off!

 

[laracomps]

PPS will you be giving Isla cucumbers? hahaaaaa

 

[CoreysMummy]

Bah, Jars all the ways - ill mush up a banana, or give him stuff that we are eating, no problem!! Apart from that, I cant be dealing with cooking food, I tried it once, with spag bol.. it didnt work, tasted like shit! So, the jar spag bol it is!

I hate the way it stains his clothes though!

 

[Sherlock]

My main gripe with them is that they mix flavours so LO doesn't really know what chicken actually tastes like as its chicken and something else. Same with fruit, its got other things mixed in with it. And as jars have added water etc to them the texture and so on is different. Also so is the flavour. No matter how good the puree it doesn't taste as good as home made IMHO. Also the colours are never the same as when you make home made purees. Children don't learn how to recognise foods they like or colours of foods etc as its all mushed in together. And then when moving on to solids it can make the transition difficult as they have to then adjust to flavours of foods not mixed together and don't recognise them. Babies won't be used to home cooked food and will be used to flavours from jars and real food doesn't taste like that.

Making your own ensures that unless you choose to mix flavours your LO will taste each food and develop tastes for the foods rather than mixes of foods. When I used to make purees for babies I was looking after I'd make seperate purees and not mix them before LO's ate them. For example I'd make broccoli puree and then a chicken one. And baby would have two flavours separate, not mixed together. Made sure LO's knew what food was what and how it all tasted. I'd put only one food on the spoon at a time. As they got older and moved on to new foods we'd do the same. And then onto solids the same way. .

If someone served me up a pile of goo and said 'yum chicken casserole with carrot and potato' I'd not eat it. I'd want to experience all the flavours apart and then have them mix in my mouth as I chewed (if I put more than one food on my fork) or apart and have a different taste from the place with each new food. So I'd not give my baby jarred puree based on that. Honestly, if I sat down and ate a jar of puree with my baby I'd think it was gross. And if I won't eat it, why should he. One of the main reasons I don't give my LO mixed purees (he has stewed apple only) or jarred food. Yes it might be a pain to go the home made route but I guess it depends on how strongly you feel about things. For me personally I wanted Galen to eat what we eat and to not feed him purees or wean before 6 months (ish). Hence doing things the way we have done. What works for one isn't for another, so each to their own

 

[sparky]

PPS will you be giving Isla cucumbers? hahaaaaa

I think Isla might be off cucumbers for life

Sherlock as far as i was concerned weaning now is just really about introducing the concept to LO of texture, flavour and swallowing. Most of the first stage jars are one to two flavours at most. A baby probably sees everything as different coloured and flavoured mush whatever it is, and Isla wont know what chicken tastes like because she wont know what a chicken is for a good bit, it will just be something else in her gob that tastes different. When she gets old enough to move onto more solid food, she will experiance the thing as a whole, smell, taste, looks texture etc and with many more senses (and a longer term memory) will be able to recal things and develop a preference.

As far as taste is concerned i dont think the hipp ones taste too bad and babies drink booby milk or formula both of which are pretty disgusting to us!

 

[Manda&Thomas]

My main gripe with them is that they mix flavours so LO doesn't really know what chicken actually tastes like as its chicken and something else. Same with fruit, its got other things mixed in with it. And as jars have added water etc to them the texture and so on is different. Also so is the flavour. No matter how good the puree it doesn't taste as good as home made IMHO. Also the colours are never the same as when you make home made purees. Children don't learn how to recognise foods they like or colours of foods etc as its all mushed in together. And then when moving on to solids it can make the transition difficult as they have to then adjust to flavours of foods not mixed together and don't recognise them. Babies won't be used to home cooked food and will be used to flavours from jars and real food doesn't taste like that.

Making your own ensures that unless you choose to mix flavours your LO will taste each food and develop tastes for the foods rather than mixes of foods. When I used to make purees for babies I was looking after I'd make seperate purees and not mix them before LO's ate them. For example I'd make broccoli puree and then a chicken one. And baby would have two flavours separate, not mixed together. Made sure LO's knew what food was what and how it all tasted. I'd put only one food on the spoon at a time. As they got older and moved on to new foods we'd do the same. And then onto solids the same way. .

If someone served me up a pile of goo and said 'yum chicken casserole with carrot and potato' I'd not eat it. I'd want to experience all the flavours apart and then have them mix in my mouth as I chewed (if I put more than one food on my fork) or apart and have a different taste from the place with each new food. So I'd not give my baby jarred puree based on that. Honestly, if I sat down and ate a jar of puree with my baby I'd think it was gross. And if I won't eat it, why should he. One of the main reasons I don't give my LO mixed purees (he has stewed apple only) or jarred food. Yes it might be a pain to go the home made route but I guess it depends on how strongly you feel about things. For me personally I wanted Galen to eat what we eat and to not feed him purees or wean before 6 months (ish). Hence doing things the way we have done. What works for one isn't for another, so each to their own

sorry sherlock but for once i have to disagree with you, Thomas has his favorite jars which include a fish pie one which has other stuff in it aswell, but he knows its the fish he likes and will eat that if i cook it aswell so as so them not being able to reconise the different foods just because its mushed together imo is rubbish.
also you say it can make the transition from jars to whole foods hard again rubbish imo, Thomas will eat a pure puree jar a mushed jar or a bag of crisps, chips even an apple he has te pincher grasps so can eat small berries if given he basicaly can eat anything give him and this has always been the case, even though he has always been fed jars from 13 weeks untill about 20 weeks when i started giving him finger foods
xx

 

[Sage]

kyran use to have the odd jar and he loved the cauliflower cheese one. But i found once he got past the smooth puree stage the stage two jars where too mushy so he went straight to homemade food coz, well basically it didnt look like mushy crap! i also noticed he has nastier poos with jar food and they'd always burn his bum.

When he was on smooth puree they were perfect and when he needed something to eat while i was out it was convenient. I used them til he was about 9months soon as he was old enough to manage whatever we had i stopped giving them to him.

 

[loz]

I give Emms jars sometimes and make batches as well. I think I will be giving her more jars with meat and fish in as I am a veggie and it means I dont have to deal with it myself.

I make up stuff with lentils, beans and cheese as I eat them too but it a bit of a hassle. I totally think it's ok to use jars but perhaps also giving some finger foods that are fresh and some of your own food mashed? Depending on how much time, energy and sleep you get, you have to do what you can to survive!!!

There's plenty of time when they're older to get them into other foods.

 

[LisaJ1986]

Angel has only had 3 jars since we started weaning, and she has thrown up the entire contents of each!

I love making my own. I know exactly what she's eating and there isn't anything sweet added to it to make her eat it!

Plus i'm a very fussy eater, and my OH isn't. So i can now cook for him knowing she will eat the same thing! I'm broadening my abilities in the kitchen now and i'm so proud of myself!
Angel will eat absolutely anything! There is nothing she doesn't like!