The Non-Toxic Baby Gourmet.

The Non-Toxic Baby Gourmet.

I've decided to drastically reduce the amount of plastic in my life. We've done really well with Oliver up to this point, and I have to say, a baby is a perfect excuse to be all snobby and anti-stuff without really upsetting anyone. Maybe people will just think I'm an overprotective first-time parent. But wait till I do this again with the second kid! Ha, haha!

Anyway, enter: baby food. Homemade baby food is all the rage these days, with every modern mama keeping Super Baby Food nicely tucked on her nightstand next to the What To Expect series (or, to quote Sarah, the "What To Freak Out About" series). Homemade is definitely best, there's no doubt about it (well, actually there is in a few instances: iron additives and super processed grains in commercial cereals sometimes being touted as necessary for new eaters).

But that's another post. What's weird to me is the amount of plastic involved with the accepted methods of feeding your baby homemade baby food. I've taken it upon myself to bed over as backwards as possible to not use any plastic with Ollie's baby food, and here's how I've been doing it so far, in a handy dandy bulleted list!

Plastic/Toxin-Free Baby Food

Skip the spoons with the silicone/plastic-y coating on the end, and, of course, the plastic spoons. We started out just using our regular teaspoons, but they're just too big for the little dude. We finally found some wooden spoons with a small enough spoon bit ("bowl"), and they're super light.

Use little wooden or stainless prep bowls as an unbreakable serving bowl.

Buy glass spice jars to use as freezing/storage containers, and also serving containers for on-the-road. Baby food comes in glass jars anyway, so don't think of it as any more of a hassle to deal with glass in your diaper bag :-). We got some from Ikea. Remember that freezing changes your food's chemistry-ish-stuff, and that kind of scares me. I know not to heat food in plastic, but wouldn't freezing stuff be just as bad? Especially if you put things into the plastic while the food is hot. The doubt is enough for me to keep the plastic out of the freezer.

After preparing your baby food (say no to teflon!), put it directly in the glass containers in individual serving sizes. Stainless also works if you can find little stainless prep bowls with lids, but chances are the lids will be soft-ish plastic. Which is still better than all-plastic.

To freeze entire pieces of fruit/veggies, chop (and peel) and spread the pieces out on a plate to freeze (this means they'll freeze individually and not stick together). When they're frozen, just transfer them to a glass container with a lid. None of this multiple plastic bag business.

With purees or ground up cereals, if you want to do something like the ice cube tray method featured in Super Baby Food, you could try the "Phantom Container" version, and scoop spoonfuls of your puree onto a tray or plate, then surround them with an upside down glass bowl until frozen. Then, transfer the little frozen mounds into one glass container with a lid. Or you could just use the spice jar method I mentioned above.

Instead of those plastic mesh thingies that you can put a whole piece of fruit, ice, or frozen fruit and let the baby have at it (without risking them swallowing chunks), here's something we just tried tonight: Unbleached cheesecloth, rinsed and tied in a knot around a slice of peeled pear. Ollie sucked on it quite a bit and managed to get some good pear juice and seemed happy to gnaw. The edges of the cheesecloth that stuck out from the knot seemed like they might fray, so I kept a close eye on him. The downside is that this isn't reusable (well, it might be within reason), but, BUT! it's compostable! Everyone loves the compost! You can just put the entire thing, cotton and fruit, into the compost bin. I hope. Because I'm going to.

Honestly, I just didn't see the need for all the plastic bags and plastic ice cube trays and plastic containers, and wanted to do something about it. I promise that they're not paying me or anything, but I managed to find almost everything I needed at Ikea. The unbleached cheesecloth is the Beyond Gourmet brand - the brown and blue packaging with the earth logo.

Here endeth my little diatribe.