Butternut Squash

Clarissa is now 5 1/2 months and sitting up fairly well with limited assistance. She's also continuously trying to steal our foods from plates, bowls, forks, and even our mouths. We figured it was time to let her start having her own baby foods. Especially since she was getting hungrier and hungrier these days.

Her first food was technically Avocado. Super easy to puree and she loved it. We didn't move on much from there but while doing our grocery shopping this month I decided that we could give a butternut squash a go!

From start to finish the process took about 30-45 minutes. This includes cutting, peeling, boiling, portioning, etc..Not bad in my book!

Stage 1 Butternut Squash
1 Butternut Squash (about 1 lb) -- Mine was 1.28lbs.
4 oz of Formula for thinning and to help the blender puree the squash (you can use breast milk or water. Whichever you prefer).

1. Peel and cut the squash into cubes that are roughly the same size
2. Steam 10-12 minutes. (I poked with a fork an when it easily slid in I knew they were ready).
3. Let cool a bit
4. Add squash to the blender (I use a baby bullet) and use formula as needed to thin and blend.
5. Then portion and freeze

:)

Clarissa gobbled it down! We didn't even lose any baby food to the face or clothes. Butternut Squash was a hit! So that'll be the only baby food we give her until I run out of the portions. Speaking of portions, I would love to give you the cost break down I did out of my own curiousity.


PRICE COMPARISON

3.92 gets me a 4-pack of stage one squash from Gerber at my local store (with Monkey I bought all store bought purees) these packages are each 2 oz servings.

3.76 got me 1 butternut squash that weighed 1.28lbs. I made 23 (1oz) servings of baby food.


I didn't feel like starting out she really needed a full 2 oz serving. She gets the 1oz and then a 4oz bottle instead of a 6-8oz bottle. This seems to fill her up nicely. I can easily add more baby food later, but once you've contaminated the 2oz you can't really do much.

If I were to package it in 2oz portions (like the store bought) I would have gotten about 11-12 servings. So for about the same price I got about 3x the baby food!! 

It blew my mind.

Happy Eating!