food for aves

ever wonder to yourself what 10lb of organic carrots looks like??  allow me to enlighten you...and ironically enough my friend erika is on the same push I am for homemade babyfood.
Costco sells carrots 10lb for $5.  $5 for 10lb!
here's what that looks like and what that equates to = 
(1) stage 2 jar of baby food costs something like $0.82. 
I usually feed ava (1) fruit & (1) veggie, plus some wheat bread with her meal.  so that's $1.64 per meal (excluding the bread).  that's $3.28/day, $22.96/week!

now take 10lb of carrots.  I only had time to make 1/2 that tonight, so 5lb of carrots makes (21) ziplock bags worth, each contains the appx. amount that (1) gerber jar would hold.  21 bags!  so 10lb would make appx. 42 bags. 
42 x $0.82 = $34.44 that I would have spent on carrots alone at the store, and I only spent $5.  you do the math.  but to save you time, I saved myself nearly $30 just on carrots.  (lucky for us Ava likes carrots...)

granted, every meal isn't that cheap.  but for the ones that aren't as good of a deal as the carrots, well it's okay because remember?  I just saved $30!  it's like I made $30 tonight by making her food for her.  AND it's ORGANIC!  So I know that what she's eating is carrots, with some butter and thyme and that's it.  no excess salt, no excess corn syrup, no nothing. 

take cantelope for example.  I bought (2) halves of cantelope tonight, $1.34/half.  I say half because I hate cutting and de-seading them and for $0.50 more per 1/2 of a cantelope I can buy it pre-cut and pre-seaded.  and since I saved $30 on carrots I can spend and extra $0.50!!.  and if we're gonna be real for a sec, I would dread cutting up the cantelope so bad that more than likely it would go bad before I cut & blended it.  SO, it's just better this way.


anyway, here is a visual of the carrot-making tonight:

(pre-cooked on the right, post cooked on the left)

(I lined my freezer door with aluminum foil JUST in case they leak...)

1. wash

2. cut

3. boil

4. blend

5. freeze

DONE.

and then when it's time for her to eat we let her snack on cheerios or

 her wheat bread while I fill the sink with hot water,

stick in her (my) entre of choice and it's as easy as that!!
 - and, if you time it right, you can leave the carrots to boil while you're feeding baby a bottle, or getting her ready for bed.  it's super easy to multi-task when it's just on boil.