Stay at Home(made) Mom

I've decided that I'm going to start a little "segment" called Stay at Home(made) Mom (a play on words... "stay at home mom" and "homemade" - get it?) where I can tell all about the things I'm making instead of buying in order to save money. I've recently had a revelation about buying baby food vs. making baby food, so here it goes...

Before Lori was born I decided that I wanted to make my own Baby food. I only started a few months ago, and I have to admit, I have used store bought. To be honest, I wasn't sure if it actually was cheaper to make my own. It wasn't until recently that I realized that it is in fact cheaper. I was talking with my friend Chilly, whose daughter is a little older than Lori and she was telling me that the once Lori gets a little bigger she'll be eating from the bigger jars and that the bigger jars cost more money... almost twice as much as I was paying. I also realized that Lori hasn't been eating a whole jar per feeding yet and she will be soon, which means I'm going to have to buy MORE food than I am. All these things caused me to take a closer look at the cost of BUYING baby food verses the cost of MAKING baby food. And here is what I have come up with...

Right now at Walmart it cost .42 for 2.5 oz of baby food. (that was the cheapest one available) Right now she's eating about half a can a feeding, which equals 61 cents a day. That's not that bad right?

The next size up is 4 oz and it cost 1 dollar. So that means that when she starts eating one of those a meal she'll be eating 3 dollars of baby food a day. (you like my crazy math skills?)

So I went to the store and bought the things I'd need to make baby food and here is what it came down to...

3 lbs of sweet potatoes at .79 a lb = $2.37

a bag of Fuji apples = .99

Ziploc Zip 'n' Steam bags = $2.79 (use these instead of steaming/boiling the fruits and veggies in water... much faster, and MUCH easier clean up!)

So the grand total is... $6.15, so far so good. The next step was to make the baby food and see how much I get.

I started with the sweet potatoes, I peeled them, and cut them in to large cubes and put them in the Zip 'n' Steam bags. I cooked them according to the directions. (7 min) Afterwards I placed them in to my food processor and blended the heck out of them, adding water until it was a good consistency. (I think next time I will add apple juice, she likes it better.)

I had saved up all the empty jars from the baby food I had purchased and I was going to use them for a project with the kids at the school I used to work at BUT I figured I'd use them for this instead.

Then I started filling up the jars. I actually ran out of jars before I ran out of baby food so I had to resort to using small Tupperware containers, and when I ran out of those I used ice cube trays. I repeated this same process with the apples.

When all was said and done I had enough jars, Tupperware containers and ice cube trays to equal 25 dollars worth, more or less. I was pretty happy with the outcome and plan on making more in the future.

If you'd like... I'll keep you posted. :)