Visualize whirled peas!

Tonight I made homemade baby food for the first time. I baked 2 sweet potatoes and then ground them up in the food processor. Then, I spooned the mush into an ice cube tray. Tomorrow morning I'll take the frozen cubes out of the ice cube tray and put them into a Ziploc freezer bag, and voila! Instant(ish) baby food, only a few seconds in the microwave away!

I can't remember what I paid for the sweet potatoes, but I looked at my supermarket's website this week, and sweet potatoes are $1 each there (even though I actually bought them at a local produce store...but hey, they don't have a website, so close enough). That $2 worth of sweet potatoes produced 10 cubes = 20 tablespoons = 10 ounces = 4 servings of sweet potatoes. I actually measured: A 4-ounce (by weight, not volume) baby food jar is about 5 tablespoons. Andrew eats one jar of baby food at each of his two table food meals per day. So, it looks like I paid 20 cents per ounce to make my own baby food.

I buy Earth's Best baby food jars in flats from diapers.com. Right now I spend $10.49 per flat of 12 4-ounce jars, or 22 cents per ounce. So, yes, it's economical to make your own baby food, and probably better for the environment (no glass jars and metal lids, although I'm sure the produce is still transported via truck just like the baby food jars are). But, at least with this batch, I didn't save that much money. Well, I saved 2 cents an ounce, or 20 cents.

BUT -- and it's a big BUT -- I got to satisfy my maniacal need to cook, with the excuse that it was for "my son." Anything to justify dragging out the Cuisinart... Sadly, despite my best intentions to the contrary, MY supper was a cold hot dog and a single-serve mozzarella string cheese thing, straight from the fridge. Alas.

Oh, by the way, I think Andrew is trying to say "ball" or "book," or other "b" words: He has rubber balls and a bath book for the bathtub, and I've always made a point of using the words "ball" and "book" repeatedly (but not obnoxiously; don't worry) during his nightly bath. The past two nights, he's definitely been making more "brbbbbbbbbrb" sounds in the tub than anywhere else, and always after I say "ball" or "book" or when he's reading for the ball or the book. He's so advanced!

Off to bed, to do more baby food research! Wouldn't it be great if I could grow my own veggies, harvest them, cook them, and make them into nutritious foods for Andrew? Sigh...sometimes it sucks being a suburbanite.