Please note: Each baby is ready to try new foods at different times. Please talk to your pediatrician about what he or she recommends for your child.
Due to Becca's issues with spit-up early on, she has had either the "AR" (added rice) formula or formula that I added rice to since she was about three weeks old. Because of this, our doctor felt her tummy would be ready to try rice cereal once she was holding her head up well on her own.
We started with the plain Gerber rice cereal (the blue label) and added a scoop of formula and water to the cereal to make it a fairly runny consistency at first. As she got more advanced with figuring out how the spoon works (let me tell you in advance that it's quite funny and quite messy the first few times their tongue gets to experiment with a spoon!), and was sitting up better, we advanced her to the Gerber rice cereal with mixed fruit (the green label) and continued to add a scoop of formula and water, going back to a runny consistency, and then slowly letting it get thicker. When she had the cereal we first had her just eat it at one meal (dinner) along with a 2oz bottle of just formula and water. We slowly over the course of a few days worked her up to a bowl of cereal two meals a day, and then three - breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She'd have that 2 oz bottle of formula and water with them, and then a regular rice cereal and formula bottle for her morning snack and before bed.
Following our pediatrician's advice, we first introduced her to mashed banana - a flavor she was familiar with from the rice cereal with mixed fruit. I found it best to puree the banana with our "Magic Bullet" food processor so the consistency was very easy for her to swallow. The more chunky, the more difficult for her tummy to process, and her acid reflux would kick in. We slowly worked our way to where she was having banana each meal with a 6 oz rice cereal bottle, with a rice cereal bottle for morning snack and before bed.
Her stomach was processing the banana well, so according to our dr's directions, we introduced her to pureed sweet potato. The first time she had it, I mixed it with some banana, and she only had it one meal a day. Then we would do banana for breakfast and sweet potato alone for lunch and dinner.
Our dr has agreed that it's a great idea for now to do a fruit for breakfast and a veggie for lunch and dinner. He suggested that since her system seems to be handling food well and she's growing at a proportionate rate and isn't too heavy for her length, we can start introducing a new food every other day if she seems to handle it well. I decided to not go that quickly with it - but he was basically telling me to "trust your mommy instincts" as he said, and to introduce new foods when she's ready. By 6 months she should be ready to just eat whatever we're having - in the pureed form. We plan to introduce meats pureed at 9 months.
Food Storage - You can either put it in baby food jars (if you have someone who has bought baby food and has kept the jars for you) or you can buy little storage containers. We were gifted with the Baby Breeza baby food maker system and some storage containers for our baby shower, but you don't have to have that system for it to work. Just remember some advice I got from my friend Christie - your baby's stomach is about the size of the baby food jars if you look at the stages of baby food at the store. You can store more than that size in a container, and just serve out of it to a small bowl for feeding time. You just don't want to over-feed your baby and stretch their stomach. Remember also that once you prepare food, you either need to refrigerate it if you are going to feed it within the week, or freeze it for later use. (More on that later)
Check with your pediatrician on recommended timing for YOUR baby on each of these foods as well as when you should start pureeing regular foods and meats for your baby. Remember that babies don't need sugars, but adding a touch of brown sugar and/or cinnamon to give a hint of flavor is ok, and by the time it's cooked and pureed, they aren't getting much anyway.
For feeding tips, visit this post: http://christysadventuresinmommyhood.blogspot.com/2012/10/feeding-tips.html
For food combination ideas, visit this post:
http://christysadventuresinmommyhood.blogspot.com/2012/10/baby-food-combination-ideas.html
Questions? Comment on this page and I'll share what I know. If I don't know, I'll be honest and tell you that! :)
RECIPES
Banana - puree until pudding consistency
Sweet potato - peel two medium/large sweet potatoes, and slice them up into chunks (I cut them in half the long way and then in 1/2" slices). Put them on a baking sheet and sprinkle with a touch of brown sugar. Bake at 400F for 30 minutes. Then put them into a pan on the stove and add formula water (or breastmilk) like you would with regular milk to make mashed potatoes. Blend them up with a food processor or immersion blender until they are smooth. Don't hesitate to add more formula water if you need to. If you are going to freeze, you can either freeze in ice cube trays (which takes a ton of space) or put in a ziploc container (labeled) and when you are ready to introduce this food, pull it out and thaw, then reheat on the stove (add a bit of water if need be) and put into small containers in the refrigerator. 2 Medium sweet potatoes will make enough food for approx 15 meals, depending on how much your baby eats - maybe even more meals than that.
Zucchini - chop, steam (20 mins), and puree 2 medium zucchini to make approx 10 meals
Pumpkin - 1 small round pie pumpkin (make sure you get a pie pumpkin, not an ornamental one!)
Cut in half, clean out all the seeds and pulp. Place on a baking sheet and sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon. Bake at 400F for 30 minutes. Scrape all the insides out into a pan (make sure you don't get the peel - it's bitter) and blend with immersion blender with formula water or breastmilk until desired consistency is reached. Makes approx 15 meals, depending on the size of the pumpkin.
Butternut Squash - prepare exactly the same as the pumpkin. Makes between 10-15 meals depending on the size of the squash.
Apples - best if you can find Honeycrisp because they are sweet and cook easily. Peel four Honeycrisp apples and wedge, be sure to remove the core and seeds. Cook on the stovetop with water or apple juice (100% apple juice - no sugar added - if you can't find this, use water - your baby does NOT need processed sugar or splenda, etc) and sprinkle with a hint of cinnamon. When the apples are cooked well and very soft, blend with immersion blender or food processor. Depending on the size of your apples, you'll probably get about 20 meals.
Pears - Peel two pears, chop (remove the core), and steam (15 mins). Puree. I found really large pears and have about 5 meals.
Peaches - Peel, pit, and chop two peaches. Steam (25 mins). Puree. Makes about 5 meals.
Avocado - Peel and pit an avocado - Puree. One avocado makes about 2 meals. NOTE - be prepared that it will brown like the bananas naturally.. This does not mean it's gone bad!
For peas - steam for 20 mins, then make sure to add lots of water before you puree - they will be very thick. So I add the formula and water to the peas. If you'd like, you can also use 100% natural (no sugar added) apple juice to puree the peas with, and add a little bit of natural sweetness to the peas.
Carrots - peel, chop, then steam for 25 minutes, add water, and puree.
Broccoli - chops heads and stems into small pieces. Steam (25 mins), add water, and puree.
PICTURES
Here are a few photos to give you some ideas - and I'll work on taking more as time goes by. Right now as you can see, I have quite a bit in my freezer, so it'll be a while before I need to make anything again...
Here you see the Baby Breeza storage containers - they are great for doing individual servings, and you can buy them without having to buy the Breeza system. I find that I actually like using my Black and Decker steamer and my Magic Bullet because I can do larger quantities at a time than the Baby Breeza allows for. Here I was obviously doing avocado.
The consistency of any of your thicker foods like avocado, sweet potatoes, peas, etc should be like pudding. It should be easy to swallow with little to no manipulation of the tongue. If it's not, add more water/formula. I highly recommend trying just a finger swipe of EVERYTHING you prepare for your baby before feeding... even if it's a food you aren't fond of personally.
Here's an example where I stored extra in some Gerber glass jars a friend gave to me. Each Gerber large jar holds two or three meals until your child is much older.
Here my B&D steamer was working on a couple of very large peaches. If you are looking for a steamer like this one, check Bed Bath & Beyond or Target. Amazon probably also has them. They are great because of their large capacity and you can use them for family meal prep as well as baby food. Just put water in the bottom, plug it in, and turn it on!
Here's an example of items stored in my freezer. I know what is in each jar, but you could label them if you were afraid you'd forget. This makes it easy to pull a jar over to the fridge as you see you are going to need it. Just give it about a day or two in the fridge to thaw naturally, or put it over into a microwave safe bowl to finish the defrost process if it isn't going fast enough.
Live and Learn... make sure that you store each jar in the refrigerator for several hours before moving it to the freezer if the foods have been steamed. Silly mommy stuck this jar of hot zucchini straight into the freezer. It's fine for now, but when I'm ready to thaw it out, I'll have some fun. Thankfully they are large pieces so I don't have to worry about glass in her food!
Idea for when your baby is ready for "dessert" after dinner. Becca now eats her dinner serving of vegetables and then has 1/2 a serving of fruit, which I call her dessert. So for her desserts I've made a baby "peach cobbler". I take my steamed peaches and add them to the Magic Bullet, then sprinkle a healthy amount of cinnamon on top (as shown). Next photo for more details - 
The steamer collects the juice from the peaches as they steam, which is another feature I love about this steamer. Next photo...
Pour some of the juice from the steamer on top of the peaches, then blend thoroughly. Next pic...
Wahoo! Pureed "peach cobbler"! When I tasted it, it had exactly the right amount of cinnamon, but if you felt it needed a bit more, you could always pour it into a bowl and stir in some more. No need to add sugar at all.
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