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Baby Food Jars

People are always (always? often? I've seen it twice?) posting ideas on what to do with empty baby food jars.  Garage storage, office storage, craft storage, homemade water color paint storage . . . you get the idea.  Well, today I came up with the perfect thing to put in old baby food jars.

Are you ready for this?

Baby food.

Yeah, for real!  I feel so brilliant for having thought of this.  Or maybe so ridiculous, for never having thought of it before.  I'm not sure.

I make all of my own vegetable baby food (Wholesome Baby Food is my #1 resource), which is cheaper (especially since we use all organic produce for as long as possible with the babies) and very easy to store in the freezer.  Fruits, however, are usually not cheaper, and they don't freeze quite as well.  I stock up on jarred fruits whenever I find great sales; otherwise, we just do applesauce and bananas until baby can eat soft-cooked finger foods.  

At any rate, I have several empty baby food jars sitting around, waiting to be repurposed, and they happened to catch my eye as I was running some butternut squash through the food processor this afternoon.  Usually I just use ice cube trays to freeze, but Owen's eating at least three cubes per meal now, so I knew I could freeze in larger portions without worrying about waste.  

I dropped a chunk of banana in each jar, stabbed it a few times with a spoon to "mash," dropped in a few scoopfuls (my small cookie dough scoop worked well) of squash, sprinkled each with a different seasoning (cinnamon, thyme, allspice, basil, nutmeg), and screwed the lid back on.  Instant jarred meals!  I worried a bit that I overfilled the jars and that they'd pop open after freezing (you know, the expansion that happens and all), but I just checked and the lids are still on tight.  (Possibly frozen on, in fact, but I'll worry about that later.) 

I did still freeze a lot of it in single cubes, so that I have the freedom to create food combinations on a whim.  But it amused me greatly (too much?) to recycle an item . . . to contain the same item it contained in the first place.  Only homemade.  :)


 (Obviously, I'll heat and mash it all together with a spoon before serving . . . )
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