As I mentioned in my last blog (HERE), we are doing a mixture of homemade purees and baby-led weaning with our little Peanut now that he is over 6 months old. The Baby Brezza has been great for us, it's worked out really well for him.
When we first ordered the Brezza, I wanted to find a good system for freezing and storing the purees. When I made food for our older daughter four years ago, I had just frozen items directly in these little containers (LINK):
12 containers cost about $15. Since I wanted to freeze a few weeks' worth at a time, it wasn't really cost- or space-efficient to use these for large batches. The seal also wasn't one I'd use for long-term freezing, which I had learned back when Pickle was little. So, I wanted something to use to freeze them that was a little more convenient.
I did a lot of research, and came across the Mumi & Bubi Solids Starter Kit (LINK).
These are two stackable trays that are air-tight containers that work a lot like ice cube trays, but more convenient. Each slot holds 1 oz. of baby food, and there are 21 slots per tray. Amazon has the two trays for around $28 (LINK), so you're getting 42 frozen items for that price. Not a bad deal.
They are very good at freezing, and very easy to use. The lids are secure and tight, I haven't had any freezerburn. It's very easy to pop the foods out, since the cubes are frozen with a curved bottom (sort of like a half-moon). You just push on one side of the cube, and it slides out. Some foods seem to pop out better than others - if your cube doesn't want to slide out, simply run the bottom of the tray under hot water for about ten seconds, and then they should slide out easily for you. Do not bend the tray like you would an ice cube tray, as that can damage it. The trays are dishwasher-safe on the top rack, and wash well.
When the foods are frozen solid, I pop them out and put them in zippered bags, and then put the zippered bags in freezer-safe storage containers. This is probably a little overkill, but it makes me feel safer to have the dual layers of protection.
I originally got the little containers from the beginning of this entry to send to daycare. The problem with those containers is that they're not tall enough to accommodate one of these frozen cubes. So, even though it's a 2-oz container, you have to cut one of your 1-oz frozen cubes in half and jam it into the container - even then, it's sometimes hard to get the top sealed tight. You would need two 2-oz containers in order to get a 2-oz serving. Not very practical.
Next I tried the Sage Spoonfuls storage set (LINK), about $27 for 12 4-oz containers on Amazon.
These work well - since they're wider at the base, the rounded, long-ish cubes fit in here, and you can actually fit 4 oz of food into a 4-oz container. I use these primarily, since they're a very secure fit of the lid. I'd recommend them strongly if you don't mind the price.
However... they ARE a bit pricy. If you skip the Sprout containers listed above, it's not a bad price (not what my husband says), but there are definitely other BPA-free options that work with the Mumi & Bubi Cubes:
- The First Years Ziploc Snacks-To-Go (LINK) - Run $5.75 on Amazon for three 8 oz bowls and three 4.5 oz bowls, all BPA-free.
These work great - we don't need 8 oz of baby food yet, so we're just using the 4.5 oz tubs. They're big enough that the curved cubes fit in them. I really like the lids, I feel like I can put them in a bag for daycare and they won't spill all over the inside of my bag. However - we send two containers of baby food to daycare every day. In order to get 10 of the 4.5 oz tubs, we need to get four of them. 4 x $5.75 = $23. You're spending about the same price as you would for 12 of the Sage Spoonfuls (although you'll also have a bunch of the 8 oz tubs, in addition, which will come in handy later). A little more cost-effective, but not as good as it could be for something that just doesn't have the same quality of product.
- Ziploc Extra-Small Square Containers (LINK) - I would get these at Wal-Mart, not Amazon. They run $2.57 for eight of them at Wal-Mart, while you're going to spend $10.99 for the same number at Amazon. Each BPA-free container is 4 oz.
These are by far the most cost-effective method. They fit the cubes pretty well, although I haven't tried to get all four oz in there. The downside of them being the most inexpensive is that they're definitely not as durable as the other options. These are meant to be disposable eventually, and they don't seal as well. They are also not as durable, the tops can sometimes break after usage. But, for $2.57 for 8, it's not like you're making a huge investment to just go buy more.
So, that was likely way more information than you ever need about transporting pureed banana somewhere. I just know that it took a lot of trial-and-error for me, and it would have been nice to have definitive information on how to freeze and store these. The Mumi & Bubi work just great, and are worth the investment, in my opinion.
I have posted before about how I used the Beaba Babycook baby food maker when Pickle was small (LINK). It worked great for us, but it was put into a storage unit after Pickle began really eating solids, and then that storage unit got flooded. We needed to find a new solution for our little Peanut. (We do a lot of baby-led weaning, but I also wanted to do some purees.)
I price-checked the Beaba versus the other items on the market, and came across the Baby Brezza (LINK). It was about $77, as opposed to the $120 that the Beaba Babycook cost. As far as I could tell, they did the same things, so we decided that was a better option for us this time around.
I've made several batches of baby food, and it has worked seamlessly. It so far is almost identical in function to the Beaba Babycook. There's a water reservoir on the back, which you fill, and then that pipes the hot water into the chamber where you're steaming the food. That chamber also has a blade in it, which can puree the food when you're done.
The Baby Brezza has a slight advantage on the Beaba in that you can choose to "steam and blend." You can just punch in the amount of time you need to steam your particular food item, then walk away, and it will blend the food automatically at the end of the steaming session. The Beaba did not have this function back when I used it, so this was a nice little touch.
The Baby Brezza also comes with four little storage containers in which you can store and freeze your baby food. You can then defrost them by putting them right back into the chamber. The Beaba didn't come with any storage containers, and the ones they had for sale were very expensive compared to others on the market.
All in all, I think that the Baby Brezza was a better buy, since it was over $40 cheaper for the exact same functionality. I would recommend it to first-time baby food makers.
Without getting into the whole "delaying solids vs rice cereal" debate, we delayed solids with Pickle until she was six months old. We did mostly baby-led weaning, but she became anemic due to only being breastfed and not being particularly enthralled with food, so we did end up having to do some baby food with iron-fortified oatmeal mixed in to raise her iron levels around 9 months or so.
I wasn't particularly excited about giving her the baby foods on the market, though - mostly because they overall sort of smelled and looked like vomit. I mean that in the nicest way, but if it makes me want to gag to open it, I can't imagine it was going to make her MORE excited about eating when she was already just so-so on the concept of solids.
I did some research (shocking, I know), and had found the Beaba Babycook Food Maker (LINK), about $120 on Amazon:
You'll notice that this is not the cheapest option - items like the Baby Bullet are cheaper. I am not a good cook (that's an understatement), so I really liked that this one had a steamer where you could first steam the food you were making (apples or broccoli or whatever), then purees it. You can also reheat or defrost food in here, if need be.
I really liked this. It was incredibly easy. I would just clean some fruits or vegetables (it also does meat, but that sort of grossed me out) into there, steam it, and then grind it. We had little storage cube things, and put the food in there to freeze. (You can get them through Beaba, but theirs are super-expensive, so we didn't do that.) We then brought them back out, put them in here to defrost, and were good to go. As I mentioned, I can barely cook mac and cheese, so the ease of this was crucial, since I made all of the baby food.
It comes with a little recipe book, which was kind of neat, but I mean, how hard is it to just put apples and bananas in together and puree them? But it was still a nice idea, and what was more helpful in the book was that it told you for how long you needed to cook everything (there are little dials on the top of the device, it would tell you to do two or three "clicks" or what-have-you).
Cleaning it was a little bit of a pain, just because I didn't feel very comfortable putting the blade or the cooking cup thing in the dishwasher, but it really wasn't too bad. I just have this innate fear of slicing my fingers open because I don't know what I'm doing - since my husband stabbed through his entire finger with a fork two days ago, this is a valid concern.
The plastic was BPA- and PVC-free, if you're into that sort of thing. I think most things these days are, but it's an extra little pat on the head.
Anyway - I got this about 2.5 years ago, but I see their line has expanded a lot since then - there's a "Pro" model that can cook more food at a time, and also a Pro2X that has two blending cup areas. The small amount of food you could cook at a time would actually be my only complaint on this item - you'd get, like, half a mango in there and have to do a new batch. So I think those might be worth the extra money.
For us, this was a great purchase, since I probably wasn't going to go and figure out how to steam food outside of this thing. It was helpful to do it all in here - I'll even use it still just to steam some broccoli or something for dinner. If you have that sort of knowledge, however, it would probably be a little cheaper to steam it some other way first and then either get a stick blender or a Baby Bullet. This was very good for the cooking-illiterate, however, so I feel like we have gotten our money's worth.
