Strangely, I owned a hand blender before I had a set of dishes or silverware. My aunt and uncle gave one to me one Christmas when I was still in my early twenties, living a carefree existence with minimal possessions. I couldn’t find the exact model, but it looks similar to this Sunny Morning by Kalorik Stick Mixer. I made some great single-serving milk shakes, small batches of pesto, pureed creamy soups right on the stove top, and created many other tasty concoctions over the years.

Flash forward to 2006, when I discovered that an immersion blender was more than an appliance for a free-wheeling single woman. It was perfect for whipping up smaller batches of baby food, when I didn’t want to clean out my entire food processor or food mill. Say I had a cup of black beans or a single sweet potato or two bananas, for example—I just put them in the cup that comes with the appliance and blended them away.

If you don’t do much cooking and therefore don’t want to shell out hundreds of dollars for a food processor you’ll never use, an immersion blender might be all you need. You can buy the Silex Immersion hand blender or the Toastmaster Immersion hand blender for just around $13. The Kitchenaid hand blender or the Cuisinart hand blenders come in different colors and offer more attachments for about $50. If you want to get really fancy, why not try the Robot Coupe Turbo Power mixer for just $760.00? Actually, I am not sure this is even for mixing food. My modest immersion blender has worked just fine for at least fifteen years, so there’s no need to go nuts with the fanciest model on the market!

Thus concludes my series on “gadgets with which to pulverize baby food.” For more exciting reading, check out my posts on using a food processor and food mill. Also, weigh in on the great Green Baby Guide duel of 2010: pro-blender vs. anti-blender.

You can get lots of BPA free teethers these days, but if you want to skip teething toys altogether, try these:

• A frozen wet washcloth. Baby will chew on the icy surface for some quick relief.
• A chunky carrot. But watch baby carefully!  She can bite off a sizable chunk and choke on it.
• A frozen banana. Then let her gnaw at it and quickly become covered in goo.
• A teething biscuit. Baby has to be nine months old at least to enjoy this treat, but enjoy it he will.  Also, remember that he will create quite a mess with this too!
• A large polished agate. Of course you’d need to supervise, but my son loved his agate and the smooth, cold surface was quite soothing to his gums.

Other ideas?  What did your great grandmother do before plastic?  We’d love to hear.

It’s official. Lately I’ve become an environmental slacker. Yes, I still compost, recycle, cloth diaper, and shop secondhand. Yes, I get a certain thrill out of using cloth grocery bags and buying in bulk. But lately I’ve committed some eco-transgressions that I feel I must acknowledge as Earth Day looms.  It isn’t quite like I’ve taken a match to the planet, (as the dramatic photo would suggest) but it doesn’t feel great to share my shortcomings.  Here goes…

My sin:
We remodeled our kitchen. In a way this seems like a good thing–but it also means that we ate lukewarm microwaved dinners off of paper plates for a few weeks. (Chinet, of course, because they’re 100% recycled!) We tried to salvage what we could of our old kitchen, but most of our built-in cabinets had to go to wood recycling. There are some heaps of stuff in the landfill that we recently added. (Ugh!)

My justification:
Our house is a thousand square feet, which is plenty of room most of the time, but we felt cramped in our old kitchen.  It hadn’t been remodeled since the house was built 51 years ago and it lacked counter space and a dishwasher. Our new kitchen is very neutral and we hope that it will last just as long. (Can you believe the average kitchen remodel happens every seven years?!) Now we have an energy star dishwasher and fridge, lots more functional space, and many more years of being able to leave a smaller carbon footprint because of the size of our home. Also, I LOVE cooking now!

My sin:
Our daughter has eaten lots of jarred baby food. We chose Earth’s Best Organic, but I really wanted to blend up homemade batches.

My justification:
My husband, who’s a stay-at-home Dad, is not overly excited about boiling and pureeing yams.  Also, during the kitchen remodel it was all we could do to get food in her mouth while washing our dishes in the tub. The good news is that now she’s eating table food and we’re done with purees!

My sin:
My children are both wearing disposable diapers at night. This is probably the most atrocious thing on my list, and it makes me feel sick that we haven’t figured out how to use cloth at night for both of them. We had some luck with Jovi in cloth, but then found she woke up more frequently.  We were too desperate for sleep to continue. Roscoe struggled with horrid yeast infections that kept recurring, so we gave up with him too.  In this picture he despairs that his mother hasn’t found an eco-friendly method of diapering him…

My justification:
My only hope is to night-train my son soon! He has been potty trained for over a year, but we have been so tired that we haven’t made a concerted effort to get him out of diapers at night. Please send me any and all advice! Maybe I’ll try cloth again with Jovi and see if she’ll sleep through the night in them. It would make me so happy to be free of disposables altogether!

Do you have transgressions to share?  Do tell!  It relieves all of us to know that we’re focused on progress instead of perfection.

I should have remembered, but I didn’t. During Jovi’s nine month checkup our pediatrician informed us that she’s ready for table food. Table food? Really? Wasn’t she just born last week?

Somehow I had forgotten that babies eat pureed food for a matter of three months or even less! That makes our small appliance duel less exciting, but it’s true. (If you’re looking for some tips on making your own purees check here, or find some fabulous recipes in our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide: Down-to-Earth Ways for Parents to Save Money and the Planet.)

When Jovi reached nine months, we did buy her some Happy Baby organic puffs and she seemed to enjoy them, but I wanted a simpler, thriftier option. Now that we’ve been experimenting for awhile we’ve found all sorts of table food options including:

• steamed carrots
• pears
• apples
• noodles
• avocados
• banana
• bread
• rice
• mashed potatoes
• puffed grains
• and just about anything we eat!

It’s also important to note that the idea of pureed baby food is a western one. In many parts of the world babies nurse and then are carefully fed small portions of “table food” when they seem interested. When I was eating a banana a few days ago, Jovi simply leaned over and took a bite—that’s definitely a sign that she’s ready for more!  Of course tots can easily misjudge the size of their bites or how long food should be chewed, so I’m sure to keep a close eye on her during mealtimes so that she doesn’t choke on her grown-up grub.

What are your favorite table foods for baby? Was it an easy transition to make?

Constrained by a dearth of kitchen cabinets, Joy has never owned a food processor. How, then, did she manage to blend up her own baby food? Did she smash yams with her bare hands, pulverize zucchini with a potato masher, or run over a bag of ripe bananas with her bicycle? No. She used her blender.

The Kitchenaid 5-speed Blender

Now, when Joy told me this, I had to laugh: this was the only kitchen gadget—and I confess to owning many, many kitchen gadgets—that I didn’t get much use of when making baby food. Blenders are more suited to blending liquid concoctions than pureeing fruits and veggies. You’ll find yourself adding a lot of water and making good use of a spatula when you make baby food in a blender. Because of this, we (well, I) recommend using a food processor or a food mill for your baby food making adventures.

If you do have a blender or want to buy a blender, it does have a place in the baby food kitchen. Once your little one learns to drink from a straw, you can pack fruits, vegetables, and “extras” such as brown rice protein powder into smoothies and popsicles. (Here’s my recipe for spinach-strawberry popsicles. Here are Joy’s popsicle recipes, including a delicious tofu-chocolate one.  And don’t forget another great blender recipe: Yumm sauce, the sauce that gets your kids to beg for beans, rice, and vegetables.)

So what blender is best? I recommend a glass blender with a wide base (click on that link for several affordable options). Cheap plastic blenders tend to change shape over time, and depending on the type of plastic used, it can leach chemicals into your food. A wide base makes the blender much easier to clean. I have the KitchenAid KSB5 5-Speed Blender, which costs $150. I bought mine over ten years ago, and I have been very happy with it.

Do you use a blender for making baby food? I promise not to chastise you for it. Come back for my reviews of immersion blenders!

Rebecca likes to cruelly taunt me about the use of my blender for making homemade baby food. Honestly, I could care less. I proudly stand behind my little Osterizer and its amazing ability to whip up heaps of sweet potatoes, baby spinach, and pureed pears. (By the way, Rebecca and I are playing up the blender drama just for show. Our nearly twenty year friendship hasn’t been damaged by this small appliance duel.)

Due to limited storage in my kitchen, I have to limit my gadgets. Nothing earns the right to live in my cupboards unless it can prove that it has many functions on a regular basis. My blender is a standby for summer smoothies, popsicles, and, of course, baby food. I simply steam or boil the food, dump it in, and add some of the liquid used to cook it. Then I whirl it up and dump it in ice cube trays for storage. When it’s frozen, the cubes go into labeled freezer bags where they wait to be microwaved for dinner. If you’re looking for some elegant and healthy recipes, along with cloth diapering tips and heaps of ways to save money on raising baby, check out our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide.

Do I find the blender difficult to use? Hardly! I will say that when I’m making a big batch I occasionally have to turn the blender off and stir the contents a bit with a wooden spoon before I start pureeing again. I can’t really say that it’s any hardship…  And, to validate my choice of appliance, there is actually a book entitled Blender Baby Food!”  I haven’t read it and can’t comment on whether it’s worth a purchase, but it certainly goes to show that I’m not the only one putting my Osterizer to good use!

Do you use a blender for baby food? What is your appliance of choice? Let’s get this debate going!

If you don’t already own a food mill, don’t necessarily rush out and buy one. In The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, we warn against buying something that you’ll use just a few short months—and really, babies graduate from pureed mush to bite-sized chunks relatively quickly. However, if you think you might get some use out of a food mill once your baby food days are over, then now is the time to get one. It’s one of the best tools for baby food cookery you can find. Why? A food mill saves a lot of work. No peeling and seeding—just steam some apples or sweet potatoes or green beans and run them through the mill. All the seeds, peels, and stringy bits get filtered right out–and it doesn’t even need any electricity to work!

RSVP International food mill

What else can you use a food mill for? I needed one to make gnocchi several years ago. The recipe warned that any other contraption would render the potato dough gluey and unworkable. Now I use it all summer to make gazpacho. (Here’s a recipe from the Gluten-Free Gourmand. Notice I plug the food mill throughout the comments!) No need to seed and peel those tomatoes and cucumbers—just feed them through the mill and they come out silky smooth. Ever try to press berries through a strainer with a spatula to make a coulis? I use a food mill for this task now.

Cuisipro Deluxe food mill

I have something similar to this RSVP International Veg-3 Rotary food mill—though I remember paying just $12 instead of $25 for it! (Mine is a Moulinex, which I did not find online.) If you’d prefer a stainless steel device, try the Oxo Good Grips food mill ($44.99) or the RSVP Endurance Stainless Steel food mill for $34.95. There’s also the Cuisipro Deluxe food mill for $104.95, but I’m not sure what makes it so much more expensive than the other brands.

Some parents buy a mini food mill for making baby food on the go. Theoretically you could take it with you to restaurants and blend up what you’re having for baby. I think this would be a waste of money; you already know how I feel about limited-use baby gear. Of course, I’m really not one to talk considering the number of gizmos that reside in my kitchen.

You’ll be happy to know that pulverizing steamed vegetables is an easy culinary skill to master, whether you use a fork, food mill, or your own mouth (as one reader suggested). We went over the various tools in this vintage post, and we still recommend making your own baby food if you want to save money. In The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, we show you just how much you can save by cutting back on jarred foods.

Kara over at Just Simply Live was kind enough to review our book. She loved the whole thing but walked away wishing we’d reviewed some food processors. Great idea! We didn’t do it in the book for a reason: We didn’t want new parents to feel like they had to rush out and buy something before they could make their pureed delights. Now, what I’m about to say may be shocking, but I’ll go ahead and say it: Joy does not even own a food processor! That’s right. Yet she managed to make a lot of her own baby food in something she did own—a blender. A blender is the worst appliance for this task, in my opinion, but that’s a topic for a future post.

A food processor is your greatest ally in the art of whirring mushy food into even mushier food. Why? Unlike a blender, you don’t have to add water to blend everything up. You’ll also get a smoother consistency more quickly than you would with other tools. You can also use it to blend dry goods; for example, I blended rolled oats into a powder so I could make my own baby cereal. I never bought boxes of rice or oat cereal, which can cost $5 a pound or more. The best thing about the food processor, though, is that it does much, much more than make baby food. It kneads, it mixes, it slices, it dices, it grates—it does everything but babysit.

So what food processors do I recommend? I have the Cuisinart DLC-10S Pro Classic 7-Cup Food Processor, which costs just under $100. It comes with everything you see in the photo. I use almost all of the attachments regularly, though it’s been years since I’ve needed to make baby food with it. The Cuisinart Prep Plus costs $133 and offers a larger (9 cup) capacity. Or, if you don’t think you’ll use it for much other than small projects, you could get the Cuisinart Mini Prep Plus for just $32.99.

Kitchenaid food processors may appeal to you if you do a lot of cooking and want special features, a variety of bowl sizes (from 3-12 cups) to choose from, and a lot of color options. The KitchenAid 7-cup food processor costs just under $100 and appears to be the equivalent of my Cuisinart.

Have you used a food processor to make your own baby food? Stay tuned for reviews of food mills, immersion blenders, and more!

Perhaps you’ve already read our new book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide: Down-to-Earth Ways for Parents to Save Money and the Planet.   Maybe you’ve discovered the homemade baby food recipes included in the book and have spend hours whirling up delicious concoctions.  With minimal effort you’ve saved money, packaging, and carbon emissions by preparing healthy purees for your little one.  Now you deserve some brownies!

Steal a few frozen cubes of whirled up nutrition and slip them into this yummy recipe!  I’ve tried this on family and friends always with great results.  No one realizes that these are healthier than your standard brownie because the coffee and cocoa make them just as decadent.

Baby Food Brownies

Ingredients

• 1/4 Cup melted butter or margarine
• 2/3  Cup baking cocoa
• 1/2  Cup whole wheat flour
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2  Cup sugar
• 1/4 Cup brown sugar
• 2/3 cup baby food puree (pumpkin, sweet potato, squash, or yam)
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 tsp instant coffee powder

Directions

Melt butter and cool. Then simply mix all ingredients together thoroughly. Spread mixture into a greased eight inch square pan.  Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes or until brownies are slightly firm.  Enjoy!

One lucky reader is going to get ALL of the following loot from today’s post!   These fantastic green prizes were generously provided by eco-friendly companies we love. The best news about this generous giveaway is that you can enter multiple times!  We’ll pick one winner who will get all of these green goods delivered to her doorstep just for entering.  Read the end of this post carefully for directions and thanks for visiting today!

• A copy of our book! Of course, we think the best prize is The Eco-nomical Baby Guide: Down to Earth Ways for Parents to Save Money and the Planet. It’s packed with hundreds of ways to save money while going green with baby.
• A HappyBaby gift pack, including organic baby food samples, an Eric Carle growth chart from YoBaby, an Infant & Toddler Nutrition guide co-authored by Dr. Sears, and a set of HappyFamily recipes. HappyBaby is the company behind this fabulous organic baby guide, and their organic foods are available in supermarkets everywhere.
• A Snugglebottoms Velcro diaper (unbleached ‘green’ cotton flannel) in the newborn size from Baby Bunz & Co. Baby Bunz & Co. has been selling cloth diapers since the ‘80s—before they made their comeback!
• A Diaperaps sample pack, including a cover, liner, and an infant size hemp/organic cotton fitted diaper. Diaperaps are adorable, waterproof, Velcro closing diaper covers that can be used with cotton prefolds.  They’re easy to use and very affordable.
• One pair of baby boy shoes from Pedoodles, in the style and size of your choice. You’ll love the style and durability of Pedoodles shoes!  Made from recycled leather, they are eco-friendly and adorable.
• An Under the Nile Veggie Crate. Under the Nile is known for their high quality organic Egyptian cotton, and this veggie crate will inspire hours of creative play as your baby grows. This cute organic baby toy is provided by The Clean Bedroom, which sells organic mattresses and other products “because you deserve a healthy night’s sleep.”
• One organic boiled wool coverall ($88) from hessnatur.  This company makes adorable organic garments for baby that are just as fashionable as they are functional.

• One Crawl Turtle Teether is being provided by Speesees, a fun organic clothing company for young ones that we also featured in our book.  
• One container of Green Dragon Pest Solutions, an eco-friendly product that will hurt household bugs such as roaches and silverflies without harming baby.  It comes in a gel so that you can avoid icky sprays with baby nearby.                                                                        

Nine Ways to Enter the Giveaway

How do you enter?  Guess what?  You can enter more than once! Each way listed below gets you one entry.  All comments have to be posted BEFORE Sunday the 14^th Tuesday the 16th of March to win.

Remember, leave a separate comment on this post for each entry you want.  If applicable, please leave the link to your Facebook/Twitter/Blog in the comment you leave here.

1. Leave us a comment on this post.

2. Email a friend about our book, our blog, or this month’s giveaways. (and don’t forget to leave us a comment telling us what you did.)

3. Subscribe to our blog (look right under the search bar) Again, be sure to comment about it below!

4. Join our Facebook fan club

5. Link to us on Facebook or Twitter.

6. Link to this post on your blog!

7. Add The Eco-nomical Baby Guide to your “to read” shelf on Goodreads

8. Add our blog to your blogroll

9. Go read our post on Five Ways to Score a Free Copy of  The Eco-nomical Baby Guide and leave a comment there if you’d like to review our book on your blog.  (Make sure to read the post for more details!) Leave a comment here as well to make sure we can keep track of your entries.

***The contest ends on Saturday, March 13 Monday, March 15, 2010***

Winner will be randomly selected.

We will notify the winner via email and will get you in touch with these companies who will ship your products directly to you. Please Note: This contest is open only to U.S. readers.

Congratulations to Rose, winner of last week’s gift basket!

Have fun everyone!