One of the things John said he was most excited about when we discovered we were pregnant was making our own baby food.  We love growing our own food, cooking it and preserving it to enjoy when it’s not in season.  Now that our Violet is 7 months old (already!!) we have started introducing her to pureed fruits, vegetables and soggy cereals with mashed bananas.  Here are a few of our recent creations, I can’t wait to see what she will eat next!

I know the good stuff is in there somewhere, I just have to figure out how to get it out!

Apple Sauce

It seems like only yesterday we went apple picking and announced to everyone we were pregnant.  In fact, Facebook just reminded me it was about a year ago!

Fall 2015: there was a pie in the oven!

Now Violet is eating and loving applesauce almost daily.  So, while they are in season we figured we better stock up.  We went apple picking last month at Solebury Orchards.  Violet loved being outside and was a great sport posing with the apples!

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If you are a local, I highly recommend visiting Solebury Orchards during the week – it is much less crowded and they offer the same experience.  We ended up picking 10 lbs of Pixie Crisp apples which translated into 8 pints of applesauce.  We used the applesauce recipe at PickYourOwn.org recommended by my friend Scott.

Pixie crisp apples made a pink applesauce! 

Plums!

We also picked up a few quarts of plums while we were out at Solebury Orchards.  As you can see in the video below-they were a hit!

Carrot Puree

Cereal check.  Apple Sauce check.  What else is in season?  Carrots!  I love carrots any way you cook them and thought Violet would love them too.  Ours are not quite ready for picking so I picked up some Jersey Fresh carrots (actually I bought all of the carrots they had) at Homestead Market last week.  I cleaned, roughly chopped, boiled and pureed them and they came out beautiful!

Don’t they look pretty?

mmmm carrot puree

Violet did not agree.  She closed her mouth and turned her head!  This was the first time she’s refused food from us.  Oh no, but I love carrots!  It’s okay.  We can try again another time.  Their sweet early flavor is a lot different than her Pixie Crisp Apple Sauce.  On to the next thing and maybe we will reintroduce these again later.

The snapdragon and quinoa didn’t help sell it to Violet, but doesn’t it look pretty?

The picture is a bit blurry, but Violet’s utter disgust is not.

Butternut Squash Puree

Next up: Butternut Squash Puree!  John has been hoarding butternut squash-every time he drives past Farmer Bob’s stand he comes home with three more!  We grew a few cute little Butterbush in our garden this year, and combined them with the ones we picked up locally.  We made a huge batch of roasted Butternut Squash puree – enough that we have stockpiled a bunch for Violet and we can have some for dinner too.  Now that it is all cooked, pureed and put away in Violet size portions, I think I will run out and pick up a few more!  As our friends the Starks would say, Winter is Coming!

Coming Soon: Coming soon to Violet’s dinner plate: pears, peaches, avocados, sweet potatoes and maybe that pile of green bell peppers John just picked!

Growing up is exhausting!