If you are just joining us, this is the 6th month update of feeding my baby homemade baby food. Each update I give you the details of what foods I introduced to my baby (Bella) during the previous month.
Pssst! You can see all my homemade baby food posts right here.
What a month! Bella turned 1 and started drinking cow’s milk from a sippy cup only two days after I quit breastfeeding her! When it’s bedtime, she can’t wait for her “milkies”!
It seems like the foods I chose this month were more on the expensive side, but I’m still willing to bet that they were cheaper or about the same price as buying baby food from the store.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you click on one of these links and you make a purchase, I will receive a small commission from your purchase.
A Sample Feeding Schedule for an 11 Month Old
Days 1-3Â Beets
Days 4-6 Mangoes
Days 7-9 Red Cabbage
Days 10-12 Lentils
Days 13-15 Salmon
Days 16-17 No New Food
Days 18-20 Pineapple
Day 21 No New Food
Days 22-24 Eggs
Days 25-27 Oranges
Days 28-30 Quinoa
Believe it or not, I let Bella eat a lot of table food this month. I didn’t let my older daughter eat table food until she was nearly 18 months old. Alas, I’m overwhelmed just like everyone else. The holidays and Bella’s birthday kept me busy, so I wasn’t quite prepared with all the food I should have been.
New Foods
For each new food Bella tried this month, Iâm going to report the following (as concisely as possible): 1) how much time I spent preparing it (keep in mind this is active time and doesnât include cooking time), 2) the quantity it produced, 3) the recipe or how I prepared it, 4) the cost to make it (for each of the first three days of introduction I gave her 2 ounces), and 5) Bella’s reaction (both how she liked/disliked it and if there was an allergic reaction).
Beets
Time: Nearly 20 minutes
Quantity produced: 8.75 oz. from 2 beets
Recipe or preparation: Beet Puree from Weelicious
Cost: $0.23 per ounce
Reaction:Â Loved it right away. Just be aware that beets stain clothes and skin. I have to warn you: the next day, she had 2 pretty stinky and colorful poops back to back. Her pee was even a nice red color. At first, I thought, Is she bleeding? But then I remembered I fed her beets. Maybe start out with 1 oz. instead of 2, because beets are a very fibrous veggie.
Mangoes
Time: About 5 minutes (if you use fresh mangoes, it will take longer since you have to peel the skin and cut it into chunks)
Quantity produced: 7.25 oz. from a 10 oz. bag of frozen mango chunks
Recipe or preparation: Perfectly Basic Mango from Baby Love
Cost: $0.36 per ounce
Reaction: She obviously really liked mangoes. However, the third day she had a scary moment where her lips turned white half way through eating the mangoes. She had a pretty high fever the day before and still had a bit of one when I was giving her the mangoes. I don’t know if it was from the fever or the mangoes, but it was scary. SofĂa didn’t have any sort of reaction when she ate mangoes, though.
Red Cabbage
Time: About 10 minutes
Quantity produced: 5.5 oz. from 1/4 red cabbage
Recipe or preparation: I just chopped the cabbage into fairly large chunks and put it in a steamer basket over boiling water for 5-6 minutes. Then I pureed it.
Cost: 5.3 cents per ounce
Reaction:Â She ate 2 bites and then shook her head no. I added some yogurt, and she ate it just fine.
Lentils
Time: About 10 minutes
Quantity produced: 28 oz. from 1.5 cups dry red lentils
Recipe or preparation: I simmered the lentils in chicken broth as suggested on Homemade Baby Food Recipes.
Cost: $0.06 per ounce
Reaction:Â She ate them just fine. I definitely noticed whole lentils in her diaper, so make sure to either blend or mash them before you give them to your baby.
Fish (Salmon)
Time: About 5 minutes
Quantity produced: I made a .8 lb. salmon, but she only ate 1.75 oz. The rest was for us.
Recipe or preparation: I placed the salmon on a baking sheet on some tin foil. I folded the tinfoil up to make a closed tent so the fish could steam in the oven. I turned on the oven to about 375F and cooked for 20 minutes (it will depend on the thickness of the fish how long it should be in the oven). I didn’t use THIS RECIPEÂ from Annabel Karmel, but it sounds really yummy for baby.
Cost: $0.37 per ounce
Reaction: Loved it from the start!
Pineapple
Time: Nearly 35 minutes (cutting the pineapple and removing the eyes is tedious; I also had to cook it and cut it into small pieces for her)
Quantity produced: 6 oz. from 1/4 pineapple
Recipe or preparation: I used the directions found on Homemade Baby Food Recipes. This Pineapple, Banana, Yogurt Smoothie (link no longer available)Â from Weelicious sounded tempting, but I couldn’t try it without a blender. đ
Cost: $0.15 per ounce
Reaction: She couldn’t get enough!
Eggs (with the White)
Time: 5 minutes
Quantity produced: 3 eggs
Recipe or preparation: I scrambled one egg each morning for breakfast. You could always hard-boil the eggs and dice them into small pieces for finger food. There are even more ideas on Homemade Baby Food Recipes.
Cost: $0.11 each egg
Reaction: She really liked the scrambled eggs!
Oranges
Time: 5 minutes per orange (if you remove the membrane)
Quantity produced: I used 3Â clementines (Cuties)
Recipe or preparation: I just peeled the orange and removed the membrane. Then I cut each slice into small pieces. There is some great information about feeding your baby citrus on Wholesome Baby Food by Momtastic.
Cost: About $0.20 per orange
Reaction: She really, really enjoyed the little Cuties
Quinoa
Time: 5 minutes
Quantity produced: 11 oz. from a 5.46 oz. bag
Recipe or preparation: I bought a bag of quinoa that had a roasted garlic flavor and prepared it according to the directions on the back of the bag. I think buying regular quinoa is the better way to go since there is no added salt.
Cost: $0.31 per ounce
Reaction: She liked it at first, but then she acted like it was too dry and wasn’t swallowing it. If I added other foods to it, she ate it much better.
All Foods
Time Total: Over the course of a month, I spent a total of 4 hours and 5 minutes making Bella’s baby food. That includes all the new foods I introduced as well as any other foods I made throughout the month. That is barely more than 8 minutes each day if you spread it across the month. Super small time investment if you ask me!
Cost for 6th month of solids:
Beets â $1.84
Mangoes â $2.16
Cabbage â $0.32
Lentils â $0.77
Salmon â $0.65
Pineapple â $0.90
Eggs â $0.53
Oranges â $0.50
Quinoa â $2.79
Other foods throughout â $28.97
Total cost for 30 days: $39.42
Cost per day: About $1.31
Let me just say that I know the total cost was probably at least $7 more than that. I didn’t calculate the cost of the table food, because that would’ve been insane, and there were a few other foods I gave her throughout the month that I only gave her once, so I felt like calculating the cost was really negligible.
I would love to continue calculating the cost of her food as I do these updates, but since she is eating more and more it is becoming quite the task. I spent well over an hour trying to calculate these costs (mostly because I was disorganized and didn’t have all my costs in one place). I would rather focus on the food itself and how I prepared it and if she liked it or ate it.
The 12th Month Feeding Plan
Bella is a year old, so she’s old enough to eat pretty much anything. I still want to be cautious with entirely new foods, so I will continue to introduce new foods to her as I have been. I will still do the 3 day approach, but I will not introduce a new food right after the last one (ex: Days 1-3 Beets, Day 4 No New Food, Days 5-7 Mangoes, etc.)
The new foods I plan to introduce to Bella this month are:
- Leeks
- Pasta
- Cheese
- Corn
- Peanut butter
- Honey
- Mushrooms
- Strawberries
Introducing all these foods to Bella would really do her little good unless I continued giving them to her. That is why I am also planning on re-introducing some foods from the past to her throughout the month. I would like to prepare them in other ways than the first time. I know that if I don’t have a plan to fit these foods into her diet, they won’t end up in it. So, these are the foods I plan on re-introducing to her:
- Zucchini
- Spinach
- Blueberries
- Beef
- Peas
- Parsnips
- Green Beans
It actually seems like a lot, and it just might be, but I’ll do what I can. If I can only re-introduce 3 or 4, I’ll be okay with that.
Since Bella is now a year old, my updates will be a bit different. I don’t want to go in depth with the costs and the time. I’ll be focusing on the food, so you can see how you can continue introducing new food to your baby.
I am not a dietitian or a doctor. This is how I feed my babies, and I am providing this information for those interested in doing something similar. Make sure you talk to your pediatrician before you start feeding your baby solid foods.
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