Homemade Baby Food

When the twins were born, something took over my body. Instead of taking short-cuts, or making life easier on myself, I have loaded my plate, so to speak! And that's how I like it!! It is kind of like when you are at a buffet, and you keep piling things on top of your plate until you look down and see that appears you are eating your last meal. (Not like I do that or anything....well, maybe.....ok, only on cruises!) Ha, ha!

I started making the twins' food a couple weeks before we introduced rice cereal. I never made Aidan's food, until he was eating off our plates and eventually "big people" food. My reasons for making the twinks food isn't because I am against store bought baby food! I think the convenience is wonderful!! However at .97 cents for two plastic containers of Gerber baby food (on sale), I needed to find a way to reduce that grocery bill!

I have done a little (very rough) math. This is what I came up with....
Let's just say each baby eats 2 containers of food in a meal (one fruit and one veggie- I am taking the rice cereal out of the picture). If you get those on sale at two for .97 cents, that is .97 cents per meal, per baby. Once they are eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner, that is $2.91 a day per baby, and a total of $5.82 a day for a twin mom! This equals $174.60 a month (plus tax)! $2124.30 a year! Ouch!

I bought $3.50 worth of sweet potatoes and they lasted my boys for months!!!

So how much am I saving?

A standard jar of baby food is 2.5 ounces. So you get 5 ounces for .97 cents (on sale-remember), that equals .19 cents per ounce!

Let's compare sweet potatoes. I bought just over 5 pounds of sweet potatoes at our local farmers market for $3.50 (69 cents a lb). Those sweet pots made 66 ounces of baby food! That is about .05 cents an ounce!!

Peas....I got a large bag of frozen (fresh) peas at Wal-Mart for under $1. It made 35 ounces of food for the boys. That is under .03 cents an ounce!!

Pears, mangos, peaches, bananas, carrots, etc. You could do the math on them all!!!

Let's pretend my boys lived off of sweet pots and peas (yuck by the way, not a pea fan!). If they consumed 15 ounces of baby food a day (5 oz at each meal) that would cost me a total of only $1.20 a day to feed both boys! That is $36 dollars a month compared to $174! $438 a year!

$138 savings in one month!!!
$1,686.30 savings a year!!!!

Now, this is just for math, I know that the boys will not be living off 15 ounces of baby food a day, forever. Right now they are actually only eating breakfast and dinner- we have not fit lunch into our schedule yet. But, you can't deny the savings!!!

Watch for my first "How do I?" post coming soon! I want to share how I make, freeze, store, and enjoy making food for my boys!

Night, night!