Baby food mill

When I wrote about making our own baby food with the Foley Food Mill, I was talking about large-batch purees, but that's not the whole picture. In fact, our baby's doctor seemed pretty sure at his 9-month checkup that he should be eating the same food that we were eating, even though at the time he only had one tooth. Not purees. I quizzed her to make sure I was understanding: so if we have spaghetti with sausage for dinner, he should too? Yes. So if we have ham sandwiches for lunch, he should too? She paused, then, yes.

We got home and tried giving the kid some chunkier stuff, and he immediately gagged and choked. Not ready yet! What to do? Let me show you our baby food mill.

KidCo Baby Steps Food Mill

I first laid eyes on this contraption when some parents at the farmer's market were running pad thai through it for their baby. Now that our kid is between the total mush stage and the ham sandwich stage, we use this mill several times a day. Sometimes we mill up the food we're having ourselves (chicken stew, for example). But often we're having some crazy spicy grownup food, so we'll improvise. For example, I keep steamed zucchini chunks or roasted sweet potatoes in the fridge. I mill it up, stick it in the baby food steamer, maybe mix in some baby cereal, and feed.

The First Years Bottle Warmer The brand doesn't matter, but if you have a baby you need one of these. Warms bottles of milk AND jars of baby food AND little glass bowls of food that I just set on top.

Another popular food with baby--canned beans (black or kidney) or garbanzos that have been through the mill. We keep a small container of these in the fridge, then grind them and add them to jarred baby food for texture and protein. A fully-cooked egg yolk also works well.

Milled egg yolk. I guess they've decided you can feed babies egg whites now, but we haven't yet.

Here's a food mill recipe: Peaches for dessert

• 1/2 canned peach (in water or its own juice)
• 1/2 cup whole milk plain yogurt
• a few walnuts (optional)

Run the peach through the food mill--like this:

Before

After

Mix with the yogurt. Run the walnuts through the mill. Mix nuts into peach-yogurt. Feed to eager baby.