Homemade baby food: The fast and slow of it

I've trawled numerous sources for information on how to make your own baby food. Making your own food is inexpensive and not too difficult, if you're willing to invest a couple of hours into batch cooking every so often. If you don't have a ton of time to stand around cooking baby food, this list should help you portion out your time and effort while still giving your kid some delicious, homemade goodness. My weapon of choice is a Cuisinart stick blender, which I use in the stainless steel pot or mixing bowl to puree the food to the desired consistency. A food mill is truly overkill, and who wants to clean the entire blender?

Some foods are a lot easier to prepare/freeze than others. Prep times suggested below reflect the total time to create one batch of the food (approx. one ice cube tray worth of stuff), not including stove time. What works most easily:

- Banana. The king of baby foods, a ripe banana is easily transported, prepared, and served. Either mash with a fork or dice into pea-size bits for the baby to pick up. Don't even bother freezing. PREP TIME: 2 minutes or less.
- Mango. Halve it, pit it, scrape the flesh from the peel, and slice the flesh into baby portions. Freeze on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper or plastic wrap, and store in a freezer bag. To serve, simple remove the amount of mango you want, pop it into the microwave for 10 seconds at a time until softened. Mash with fork and serve. PREP TIME: 5 minutes or less.
- Avocado. Again, halve, pit, scrape, slice, and freeze--just like the mango. To serve, let it sit on the counter for 20-30 minutes, or defrost in the microwave for 8-10 seconds at a time (avocado defrosts quickly). Little known fact: If frozen right after slicing, the avocado remains green. You can easily freeze slices to pull out for your own delicious and attractive salad accompaniment. PREP TIME: 5 minutes or less.
- Apples/pears: Of the cooked foods, these are easiest to puree and freeze since they break down so well when cooking. Peel & slice several apples or pears, then bring to a boil in 1/2 C. water. Simmer 10 minutes or until fruit yields easily to a fork or knife stab. Let cool a little, then either mash or puree to desired consistency. Pour into ice cube trays and freeze. Pop the cubes out of the trays and store in freezer bags. PREP TIME: 20 minutes or less (divided)

Most annoying to make yourself, in descending order of irritation:
- Green beans. The outside of a green bean doesn't puree well, so it's hard to get the right consistency for the youngest eaters. Add water to make the consistency and blending better for baby. PREP TIME: 25 minutes, mostly spent trying to ram those last bits under the blender blade.
- Winter squash. This isn't dead-last because they can be cooked in the microwave with a minimum of nutrient loss, but squash take a long time and babysitting to get them cooked right. After you heave out a cleaver to open them up, of course. PREP TIME: 30 minutes, or longer if the flesh sticks too much onto the peel.
- Sweet potatoes. Yes, the kids love them. No, you'll hate making them: Forcibly peeling an awkwardly-shaped spud, and then cutting it up with my largest available knife, is not in my workout regimen. At least make the cutting a little easier for yourself by choosing longer, thinner potatoes over shorter, rounder ones. PREP TIME: 30 minutes or so, depending on the cratered terrain of the potato.

The other foods roughly fall in the middle of the cost/benefit spectrum: peas, peaches, carrots, broccoli, etc.

Bon appetit.

How to peel a pineapple/a butternut squash

The processes of removing the hard outside of a pineapple and the tough outer peel of a butternut squash are remarkably similar. I've seen so much bad advice for both out there that I will provide the authoritative method for both items of produce:

- Choose a pineapple that is sweet to the smell and already yellowy-brown on the outside. For a butternut squash, find one that has a mostly even, regular shape throughout (less bell-shaped, more hourglass).
- Remove both the top and bottom. Discard.
- With a very sharp knife and steely nerves, slice the peel off going from top to bottom. (On an irregularly-shaped squash, you may have to cut the squash into two pieces first.) I cannot stress enough the importance of a heavy, sharp knife for this. Dull or weak knives will chop up the peel/flesh and make the job interminably long.

**Don't be afraid of losing some of the edible flesh as you remove the peel--this will happen, and cutting too closely will only result in a sloppy chop job that you'll have to repair with many mini-slices later on. Using strong, authoritative cuts down the length of the item will produce the best result at a minimum of time and effort.**

- Halve the produce.
- For the squash, scoop out the seeds and cut into desired pieces. For the pineapple, cut the halves in half, then remove the core of the pineapple that is too tough to eat. Cut the remaining fruit as desired.

See? You don't have to pre-steam the squash or try to remove the pineapple rind off of too-small pieces. Both items of produce are delicious and deserve to be enjoyed with minimal effort, and it's far more economical for both items to buy them whole and peel them yourself. Get your knives out and get going.