This is a good soup for babies who prefer fruits but really need to eat their vegetables. According to Gerry (the hubby), even with all the squash, the soup tastes a lot like applesauce. If you want to use this recipe to make a savory soup, you can always switch out the water with chicken stock, take away an apple and add spices like sage (1/4 t) and ground black pepper (1/2 t).

Yield:

64 oz. / 128 T.

Ingredients:

• 1 medium butternut squash
• 2 small acorn squash
• 2-3 small apples
• 3 c. low sodium chicken stock
• 2 c. water
• ¼ t cinnamon
• ¼ c brown sugar

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Cut squash in half and scoop out stringy goop and seeds.
3. Slice a line of skin off apples (to prevent exploding. I forgot to do this. My oven is covered in appley goodness.)
4. Place squash and apples flesh side up in a pan and put in oven.
5. Cook for 1 hour or until tender.
6. Allow to cool.
7. Puree in a food processor or blender, adding stock and water slowly.
8. Pour puree into a soup pot and add cinnamon and brown sugar.
9. Simmer, stirring often.
10. Allow to cool.
11. Place in ice cube trays, freeze, and store for up to 6 months.

More ideas:
For a smoother consistency, you can use a stick blender and puree the soup farther once it is in the pot.
For older babies, boil up some chicken or beef, grind it up a little and throw it in, too.

*Don’t miss out on the Once A Month Mom Party October 10th – RSVP Now – Space is Limited!

This is the first in a series of baby food menus that will be coming to you geared towards fall foods/harvest. At younger ages, it is harder to have much variety as you are likely still introducing new tastes and combinations. If you are JUST starting to feed your child baby food you will want to start with a basic 4-6 month menu with NO mixed vegetables. That menu should be coming out by the end of next week.

I hope that you and your little one enjoy this fall feast.

Menu

Vegetables

• Winter Squash (Butternut or Acorn)
• Carrots
• Sweet Potatoes
• Sweet Potatoes, Carrots & Cauliflower
• Potato, Winter Squash & Peas

Fruits

• Apples
• Pears
• Bananas
• Avocado Banana
• Pear, Apple, Apricot Puree

Printable Menu

Grocery List

• Included in this spreadsheet you will find a listing of all the items you will need to complete your once a month cooking (OAMC) baby food BIG DAY. For more instructions on how to use this, go here.
• Grocery List

Instructions

• These are the step-by-step instructions you will need to quickly and efficiently approach your once a month cooking (OAMC) baby food BIG DAY!
• Instructions

• These are the step-by-step instructions you will need to quickly and efficiently approach your OAM Cooking BIG DAY!
• Printable Google Docs Instructions

Recipes

Please note that all recipes in this document have been altered (increased quantities) to meet the needs of ONE baby for ONE month. It is indicated on each recipe whether it has been doubled or quadrupled for your convenience. If you are just one person or would like to make less of a particular recipe, you will need to make the adjustments on your own to the recipe and to the grocery shopping list.

Night Before:

• Optional (but HIGHLY recommended) – chop up all vegetables.

Day of:

1. I will be introducing my son to some simple meat purees.
2. I feel it is important to introduce as many different tastes as possible. With this said, I will have a few veggie purees that have more than one ingredient.  The recipes I chose have more bitter veggies in them (broccoli and spinach mixed with sweeter ones such as sweet potato and carrot), and since I worry about the ratio and my son’s pickiness I thought making them from a recipe would be my best bet.  With fruits, I typically mix equal parts of different fruits since most fruits go well together, but freeze them individually. So this will add a few extra steps but I feel it will be worth it to give my son unique tastes that have been tried out prior to me.

As you will see in my menu I have 3 categories.  With my first son, I always strived to give him one meal a day, typically dinner, that had protein in it.  I must admit, there isn’t any science to back this up, just mother’s intuition.  The other two meals, I kept simple with fruit or veggies. So I will do the same with my second son. So I have planned for 30+dinners with some form of protein, 30+ veggie, and 30+ fruits meals. I am actually trying to plan a little bit more than 30 for each since the recipes may yield slightly different amounts based on unique sizes of produce.

So here is what I will be making this month:

Dinners

• Tasty Ground Meat with Rutabaga & Tomato
• Baby Beef Stew
• First Chicken Casserole
• Chicken with Sweet Potato and Apple

Veggies

• Sweet Potato, Carrot and Broccoli
• Rutabaga, Carrot and Peas
• Spinach, Potato, Parsnip and Leek

The above 3 makes approximately 16 servings.

• A variety of single veggies from the 4 – 6 month menu.  Most likely carrots, peas, green beans and butternut squash (if I can find it), and possibly corn.

Fruits

The beauty of fruit is that most fruits mix well with each other. So I will be making the following fruits individually and mix them day by day.

• apples
• bananas
• blueberries
• pears
• peaches
• avocado

All of these mix well with each other, so one day I might pull out a cube of bananas, a cube of peaches and a cube of blueberries and mix together.

Here is a link to my Google Documents Spreadsheet that has all the recipes that I will be using for the March Menu. Please note that each recipe is on a different sheet and the tabs for those sheets are on the bottom of the spreadsheet.

I will post the grocery list in the next few days with total combined quantities.