Home-made food beyond the puree stage

[Sarah O]

Hey guys,

I've been making all my own food and using the food cube freezer method so that I can batch-cook (twins dontcha know!).  As we move into fingerfoods now, I'm wondering how the food cube method evolves so that it's just as convenient but accomodates non-purees.  Is there a document/post/interview/whatever somewhere that someone could share that outlines a method for cooking, freezing, and serving homemade finger foods?  I have the Super Baby Food book but don't recall seeing much on this topic...I hate to re-read that behemoth of a book...no time for that, LOL!!

Thanks!

Sarah

[RachelC]

Sarah,
You can cook and cut up things like broccoli and cauliflower, cut up melons, etc and then freeze them on a tray lined with wax paper so that the peices are not touching.  Once frozen, freeze like you did the cubes.
You can check out pages 291-292 of that book noone had time to be reading, especially one with twins 

Let me know if you need more suggestions.
~Rachel

[Sarah O]

Hey Rachel...

Thanks for the reply.  Question: the baby food books I've read say never to re-freeze frozen vegetables...what's your opinion?  It would be SO much easier and convenient to have a bag of frozen broccoli pieces and just cook up and re-freeze what I need, when I need it.  Is this one of the 'rules' that people break and it's just fine, LOL?!

Thanks..
Sarah

[RachelC]

Yup... that's one of those rules that I break!  I did it with peas for dd1 and I am sure I will do it again.

Glad to help 
~Rachel

[~BeckyD~]

  I never knew that 'rule', and I have always done it!  I use frozen peas, broccoli and green beans. I always did with DD aswell and we have never had a problem.

Jack has just been through a spoon refusal phase (mixed with some teething and a tummy bug) and basically would only eat finger food, so for a good few weeks I was so stressed out with his feeding. 
Basically he lived on:
carrot sticks (cooked, frozen in tubs, and thawed)
swede cubes (as above)
peas
potato cubes (same)
cheese spread on wholemeal bread (cut into small squares)
pear slices (tinned)
banana slices
cheese cubes
toast
breadsticks
cheerios

Now I am relieved to say he is over his 'your not allowed to feed me with that spoon' phase. So I am making pretty much the same food as he used to eat when all was good, but now I mash instead of puree.
I either cook the veg/meat or whatever and freeze it whole, in storage tubs.(Or if we run out of tubs, we have used freezer safe tin foil) then you just need to leave to defrost over night and warm and mash it when needed.
Or I will cook and mash it, then freeze it in a small tub.  You can buy those ones that are perfect for fitting 1 meals worth of mashed food into-but you need quite a lot if you want to store it in bulk  we just seem to have accumulated a cupboard full over time.
I read a post on here the other day which was quite useful, heres the link (I hope!)
https://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=57557.0

Wow, that ended up being quite long-sorry! Just rambled on a bit then!

Hope that helps you out.

Love