So to begin we had to pick our apples and pears! As I was researching about pears I learned something new, they are one of the few fruits that will not ripen while on the tree. Therefore, once I had picked the pears, I wanted to speed up the ripening process, so I did some more research and learned something else! A way to speed up the ripening process is to stick the pears in a brown paper bag with a ripening banana. So I tried this and it seemed to help! Here are our apples and pears! There are LOTS!
All you have to do once the fruit is picked (and ripened) is core, peel, and chop it into cubes. Stick it in a crockpot for around 3-4 hours with 1-2 cups of water. A crock pot FULL of apples took about two cups of water. The crock pot of pears wasn't all the way full, but close, and took about 1 cup of water. I guess pears are juicier than apples are! (Note: I realize that when pears are all the way ripe, they are very soft and wouldn't need to be cooked down. You could just mash them up for baby without cooking. However, pears have a very gritty texture and the cooking process makes the texture much smoother! Plus, I didn't have time to wait for my pears to get really ripe, so cooking them worked best for me!) I had 2 crock pots of apples and 1 of pears!
When the fruit begins to mash when you stir it, then it is done. It will look like this once stirred.
I then took the fruit out of the crock pot and put it in a food processor to make the texture smooth. Here is a picture of the finished product.
Now it is time to freeze the sauce. This is where you can spend a little bit of money if you want, or you can just use ice trays that you already have. I had borrowed some ice cube trays from a friend that allow you to easily pop out individual cubes of food. I then bought some Tovolo ice cube trays (pictured on the right) which also allows for easy removal. I like the Tovolo trays because they freeze perfect 1 ounce cubes. I also froze some food in regular ice cube trays, which worked just fine, but the food was much harder to remove. Here are what the trays that I used looked like:
Once you find a tray that works well for you, all you have to do is fill the trays and level off the tops like so:
Then cover this in plastic wrap and freeze! Once frozen, pop out the cubes and stick them in a freezer bag. Label the bag with the food name and date you made it. Then store this in the freezer. When you are ready for some food, just thaw a few cubes! There you have it, cheap, easy, organic, FREE baby food! If you are just starting to make your own baby food and have questions, here is a good blog that is very helpful- http://styleberryblog.com/creating-a-new-normal-efficient-homemade-baby-food
you guys had quite the harvest! way to GROW haha I had to. Miss you!
ReplyDeleteIf you still have a lot of apples that no one has claimed yet I'd love to make some applesauce for Layla!
ReplyDeleteFeel free to come pick some whenever! Some of them are up kind of high, but we have a fruit picker you can use :) Just let me know when you want to come by!
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