Adventures in Babyfood Making

As some of you may know, I have ventured out this go 'round with Owen...I have been making his babyfood.  Now, this is a more widely practiced activity than I thought to begin with!  I have a few friends who did it with their kids who are a little older than Owen, and I have a few friends who are doing this now with theirs who are about Owen's age.  My greatest resource has been WholesomeBabyFood, and then just my imagination!  They have recipes for everything under the sun!  I feel like Owen has been exposed to foods he might not have had on tub/jar food.  And I feel like I've been able to give him more finger foods a little earlier because his system is already used to "regular" food????  (But teeth will HAVE to come in for us to move on up in our food adventures!!  The child still doesn't have any!) 

There wasn't any particular reason that I did this, other than I thought it would be fun and I knew of a few friends doing it, too!  I didn't, however, expect Owen to become a "food snob" over it though!  He won't touch the tub/jar food!  So he hasn't had too many greens up until now.  I did start him on some English peas recently as finger foods.  We went out of town in August and I thought I would make it easy on myself and purchase 3 days worth of food---- WRONG.  Owen didn't touch it!  I even bought the good stuff--- not just peas!  So he had a lot of mushed up bananas that weekend!  I've tried getting Miles in on some of the action...sadly- one day I had some pears and peaches (fresh- hadn't been boiled down or baked yet), and I offered Miles some in a cup and told him what it was.  He is so used to the canned stuff that he told me that I had not given him peaches and pears!  So I am slowly introducing Miles to the "real" stuff!  I may try to trick him get him to try some orange applesauce!  {see middle pic below}

Now I haven't been so particular as to make my own oatmeal and biter biscuits and stuff.  Sounds great and I think I'd have fun doing it- because I truly have enjoyed making his food- but there just aren't enough hours in the day!  And so far I have only had one thing not turn out the way I wanted it to--- spaghetti squash.  It was just too stringy and I don't think I cooked it long enough.  I was really grainy.  (And did you know that it's called spaghetti squash for a reason?!)

So-- what was your preference?  If you started with one kid, did you feel like you needed to do it with the rest of your kids?  As I was standing in the kitchen tonight making up food, I was thinking that Owen might be the "favored" child...not sure if I'll do this for the next {hypothetical} kiddo!  I didn't do it for Miles and he turned out to be a great eater!  (Although you wouldn't know it looking at his skinny self!)  Hope doing this doesn't make Owen a picky one! 

What I started with the first time (after he had been introduced to most of these things)-- bananas, acorn squash, avocado, peaches, sweet potatoes, and cucumber.

My products from tonight- blueberry peaches, pears, blueberry pears, carrots, and carrot-applesauce.

The mess...in an "organized" fashion...after I had cleaned up the counters.