The Cutest Little Baby Food I Ever Saw!!!

After making my own fresh baby food purees for three babies, I think I may have it figured out.  Just as I'm about finished... isn't that how it usually goes?

For my first son, I made big batches of baby purees and froze them in Fresh Baby ice cube trays.

The good thing about this system is that I could grab a couple cubes of baby food to thaw in single servings. The bad thing about this system was pouring the baby purees neatly into the cubes, and some of them were a little hard to pop out. Although I do still use the trays as a great way to freeze very small amounts of breastmilk to use in baby cereal.

For my second son, I had a "muffy cup system." I decided I'd rather freeze his purees in these cute silicone muffin cups, then popped them out and stored them in ziplock bags. I'd grab one frozen muffy cup at a time, transfer it to a plastic lidded container and let it thaw in the fridge.

The good thing about this system was that it was much easier to pour the purees into the wide-mouthed muffy cups than it was to spoon them into lots of little ice cubes. And, it was much quicker and easier to pop them out of the silicone cups than it was the harder ice cube trays. One muffy cup was about 1-2 serving sizes, which was a nice amount to thaw at once. The bad thing about this system was that it was harder to thaw the purees quickly if I needed to, and that it dirtied up more dishes. Neither system was super for taking purees on the go.

For my third son, I stumbled across this SQUEEZE STATION!!!!!!! Hold on to your hats, and get a load of this thing:


It is FABULOUS!!! I pour my purees into the tubes, plunge them easily into the adorable clear squeeze pouches, cap them, label them, and freeze them. These are the first ones I made...

And here are a few more...

One time I made the mistake of running out of these precious little pouches. Even though my son had even written me this note reminding me to order them...

So I had to buy them at Walmart instead of Amazon and paid a few bucks extra for them. (Amazon's pouches are cheaper!!!) But, the ones from Walmart did have cute little animals on them. Seriously, have you ever seen a cuter batch home made baby food?! I think not.

So these days my freezer looks something like this...

There are a lot of benefits to this system. The pouches are easy to fill, easy to thaw, easy to use, and great when we're on the go. I can grab a pouch straight from the freezer and toss it in the baby bag at breakfast time and by lunch time it's ready to serve. Or I can take a pouch right from the freezer and warm it in a bowl of hot water (just like you do with breastmilk) and it's ready to serve in a couple minutes. I love that there are minimal dishes...  The station itself is easy to clean in the dishwasher, and once the food is in the pouches the only dishes I dirty are baby spoons. I even bought the little spoon that screws right onto the pouch for when we're out, and it's really handy! I really wish that this system was on the market six years ago!

You can browse the squeeze station products here, but this is what I got:

• Squeeze Station (the station plus 10 pouches)
• 50 squeeze pouches (50 lids are included too) 
• Pouch Spoons (screw directly onto the pouch)

If you're wanting to make your own baby food, or giving the squeeze station as a gift to a new mom, I also highly recommend my favorite baby food cookbook, Mommy Made, which has simple instructions so you can whip out your baby food like a pro...

• Mommy Made (& Daddy Too): Home Cooking for a Healthy Baby & Toddler

(*Update: The adorable animal pouches I got at WalMart are also available on Amazon, but beware that you only get 25 lids with 50 pouches! I'm not sure what's up with that. Once I realized this I started saving some of my used lids to wash and re-use with the remaining 25 animal pouches. They are adorable but I'll stick with the plain pouches since my baby doesn't care, it's cheaper, and I get enough lids!!!)