You can mix a frozen cube of sweet potatoes and another of broccoli or green beans, mash it up with a little store-bought apple sauce and sometimes a boiled egg yolk and you’ve got a nutritional powerhouse for your little gourmand. I experimented with different veggies and fed him a lot of fresh fruits. Anything you can easily peel and mash, pears, bananas, kiwis are all great. Eventually I was making chicken stews and freezing them this way, by boiling a whole chicken and adding brown rice and carrots, pureeing the whole thing in a food processor and freezing it in cubes.
There are recipes available for making your own baby cereals too, but I confess to always buying the organic kind in the box that mixes up instantly with hot water. Some conveniences are just too good to pass up.
Now for the shopping: Whole Foods carries more organic baby food, including fresh ones now in the refrigerator case, than any other market I’ve seen, but organic foods have grown hugely in popularity and distribution just in the five years since I’ve been a parent. Many of the large grocery chains now have house brands of organic dairy and eggs, they are carrying more organic cereals and produce as well. According to Organic Monitor, a research journal published by the research & consulting company with the same name, global sales of organic foods increased by 10.1 percent to $23 billion in 2002 and are projected to continue growing at a much faster pace than conventional foods. Even Walmart announced last year that it would carry organics in all of its U.S. stores, and price them no more than 10 percent higher than comparable conventional items. All this is good news for you as a consumer because it means that there is more competition in the organic market, bigger distribution networks and falling prices.
Simultaneously, farmers markets are popping up in more and more cities and becoming lavish cornucopias in established locations where you can get really fresh organic or “pesticide-free” produce, often at better prices than what is available at the supermarkets. In many places you can even have locally grown produce delivered weekly to your home direct from a farm or co-op. You can find a market near you by entering your zip code at Local Harvest.
