Homemade Baby Food for Older Babies & Toddlers

Happy New Year! I still can’t believe I’ve been doing this parenting thing for a year AND that it’s 2015 (yikes!)! G’s first birthday was in November and boy did we celebrate! I threw him a beautiful fall themed birthday party (with the help of LOT’s of family and friends), but due to finally starting school (hooray!) and all the busyness of the holidays, I just wasn’t able to get a blog post up in time. I will have to post the party next fall (and you’ll see why I will be doing his birthday party at Chuck-E-Cheese next year! Lol).

G is eating most of the same foods as me these days and although he’s definitely a little man that knows what he wants (he even tells me that he wants to “eeeeaaaat”), he is still a pretty good eater. I wanted to quickly share some ideas that have worked well for us and that G still enjoys nomming on as a toddler.

Banana Flax Bites: one chopped banana+milled flax seed

G just can’t get enough Banana Flax Bites…can you tell? 😉

I got this idea when I was starting to get G use to the idea of finger foods and he had mastered the “puffs”. He’s always been a big banana fan, so I decided to coat them in milled flaxseed to make them a litter easier to be picked up by tiny fingers and sneak in some extra nutrition. He loves them and they are one of our go-to’s for breakfast!

Lavender Beet Greek Yogurt: pureed beets+a dash of lavender (less is more!)+greek yogurt to taste

I had talked about adding a lavender beet recipe to the mix in a previous post and this is what I came up with (actually on accident!). I was originally trying to make a lavender beet puree and accidently added too much lavender, making the entire batch super bitter. I had some greek yogurt in the fridge and added a little bit on a whim. It tasted fabulous! The yogurt neutralized the bitterness. He still loves it in one of his Squooshi pouches.

Cinnamon Oatmeal Apple Sauce:  organic apple sauce+milled oats+cinnamon to taste

This is another one we like to “pouch up”. It’s super easy too! I just buy organic apple sauce, quickly mill some oats (I usually have some around in an airtight container), and throw in a little bit of cinnamon. G is a huge apple fan! Are all babies obsessed with bananas and apples?? 😉

I also wanted to mention a little something about our favorite pre-packaged baby food: Oh Baby Foods

The pouches are BPA free and filled with safe and nutritious goodness. They are all organic and you don’t need a scientist to help you read all of the ingredients on the back. My (our) personal favorite is the “LavenBerry” and was what inspired me to play around with the Lavender Beet Greek Yogurt. It’s so good, I want to eat it myself! 😉

I’m still on the hunt for (easy) great finger food ideas to fill up my growing boy. I’d love to hear other busy mom’s ideas and will be sure to post more good ones!