Everyone knows that part of the FUN of going to the Fair is the Food.

Fair food tantalizes all the senses with the amazing displays to draw you closer, the wonderful smells to get you hungry, the sounds of “mmmm” and “ahhhhh” as people sip, lick, and chew on what they’ve purchased, and the explosion of taste when you finally decide on a little something for yourself.

Everything about Fair Food is FUN!

Everywhere you look there is some kind of incredible edible to behold.

And just when as you begin to truly, truly salivate over all the delicious choices…

You run into something like this.

What is going on in this world?!

Here’s something that seemed to be a big new item this year…

Deep Fried Butter.

No… not something deep fried in butter. We’re talking a stick of butter, covered in batter, deep fried, and served up on a plate covered in whipped creme and chocolate sauce.

And then there was this…

I’m sorry. I can’t even comment. There just aren’t words…. except for maybe one…

WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!

Phew.

Glad that’s over.

Suddenly I’m not hungry anymore and I’m not sure I ever will be again.

Okay… things are just getting down right completely out of hand.

Let me take you back to the good stuff.

Ahhhhhhh…

Cool. Sweet. Refreshing. No oil involved.

Though Fair Food is a lot of Fun, it doesn’t come cheap.  I’ve developed some strategies over the years to help me stay on budget when taking my family to the Fair that still allows me to enjoy every bit of what I want.

It’s tempting to want to come to the Fair and plan on tasting everything, but unless you have money to burn, I suggest eating before you come and bringing plenty of your own snacks and water from home. This way you can plan to spend food money on a single meal, like dinner, and a single snack such as an afternoon appetizer or a late night treat.

Trying to pay for a family of five like mine to eat a couple full meals, plus snacks and drinks whenever someone gets thirsty or hungry, would seriously break the bank.

Last week on our excursion to the San Diego County Fair we ate breakfast and lunch at home and then piled in the car and got to the Fair around 2pm. I threw a bunch of bottles of water in the bottom basket of our stroller and I filled a grocery bag with Animal Cookies, Granola Bars, Fruit Rolls, Pringles, and Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches.

Everyone was welcome to snack as they pleased as we meandered amongst the rides, games, farm animals, and exhibits and at about 7pm everyone was ready for some actual dinner.

My hubby and my 8 year old decided on some really yummy French Bread Pizza. It was $9.00 for the plate, but there were four large pieces, enough for both of them.

My four year old and one year old are both very plain and picky eaters. They didn’t want anything from the Fair for their dinner, but were both thrilled to eat the Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches I had made and brought with us.

And then it was my turn…

What oh what shall I choose???

Tempting.

Interesting.

Perfect!

I had a giant stuffed baked potato filled with chicken, salsa, sour creme, chives, cheese, and topped with slices of fresh avocado.  I nearly choked when the cashier said that for the potato and a small soda my total was $11.50, but after I took that first bite, every bit of remorse melted away. That potato was soooooooo good! And that ice cold sweet soda hit the spot after drinking only water all day.

As I walked around the Fair, eating my potato, completely happy with my dinner decision, I realized that in total I had only spent $20.50 on food purchases. Our whole family had eaten dinner, consumed plenty of snacks brought from home, and were fully hydrated from drinking water all day. No one was hungry. Everyone was content. And I still had plenty of spending money in my pocket for the night ahead full of rides, games, and some kind of treat.

Not too bad. Not too bad at all.

I felt even better when I meandered past another Potato stand that was charging $7.50 for just the potato and $1.00 for every topping you wanted to add to it. I had gotten the better deal and that right there is a good tip…. At the Fair there are often several different stands that sell the same kind of food, but with varying portion sizes and prices. Shop around a bit before you commit.

Check out the bottom three potato toppings in far right column, in the above picture. If you’re the person who chooses those toppings for your potato, please leave a comment on this post and tell me where in the world you were raised and by who.

WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!

Excuse me.

I wasn’t expecting that to happen again. I’m done. I’m moving on.

So when the night gets late and you’re done with all of the rides and games and you begin to meander toward the exit, a funny thing happens.

Certain concessions begin calling out to you. Certain smells begin reeling you in, and you realize… “Hey! I’m pretty sure I’m starving.”

There are plenty of sweet treats to be had at the Fair. They are available on every corner.

But, for me, there is no difficult decision to be made.

For me, there is only one final treat of the night to be had when at the Fair.

Oh baby!

Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!

This is a Mexican Funnel Cake.

If you’ve never had one, you haven’t lived.

It’s the best fried food on the planet and it’s big enough to feed your whole family.

It’s a Funnel Cake, but instead of the typical batter you’re used to, it’s churro batter drizzled and deep fried in oil to a crispy perfection, and rolled in cinnamon and sugar just like your favorite fresh hot churro. But then it is covered in strawberries and whipped creme. I prefer to eat mine without the drizzle of chocolate seen in the picture above, but that’s just me. You do what you gotta do.

The sign said, “Serves two” and this fresh hot delicacy will set you back $11.00 for one plate, but like I said, it fed all five of us. It fed all five of us very, very,well, and made us very, very, happy!

While Fair food can be pricey, a lot of the portions are big enough to share and the flavors rich enough to make you want to give some of what you have, away. In total that day we spent $31.50 to feed our family of five and we thoroughly enjoyed every bite!

We chose a “Kids get in FREE day” and bought $3 admission tickets for my husband and I at Albertson’s before coming. All the rest of our small Fair budget was able to be spent on rides and games. It was a FANTASTIC DAY!

It you haven’t been to the Fair in a while you should find out when one is coming to your county, and go.

And if you’ve never had a Mexican Funnel Cake… I’m sorry. You should fix that. Right away. And don’t just take my word for it…

The Food Network rated Mexican Funnel Cakes as the #1 Fried Food at the Fair.

Get thee to the FAIR! And bring some money for the food.

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In two months of making my own homemade baby food instead of purchasing it ready made in jars - I have saved $228

Here’s how:

Llany is now one year old.  He has been eating more than one jar of baby food per meal.  Typically he can eat two, stage 2 jars per meal which was coming out to a consumption of six jars per day.

I had been buying Earth’s Best organic baby food which ranges in price from $.74 – $.99 per jar.  For the sake of this comparison I rounded up to $1 per jar because in my state there is also added sales tax to consider.

So at $1 per jar, consuming 6 jars per day – I was spending $6 per day on baby food.

To keep this up, in two months time, this would cost me:

$360 for a two month supply of jars of baby food.

Since making all my own baby food, and providing even more than the portion equivalent of two jars per meal, it has cost me:

$132 for a two month supply of homemade baby food ingredients.

The following is a shopping list of products I used to provide TWO MONTHS of meals for baby:

(Not all items were purchased in one shopping trip.  Some of the fresh produce was purchased separately each month.)

Fruits

2 Bunches Bananas             Costco             $4 ea.               $8

2 Flats Pears                          Costco             $6 ea.               $12

1 Frozen Strawberries       Costco             $10 ea.             $10

2 Flats Apples                       Costco             $10 ea.             $20

I also picked up a couple cans of organic pumpkin and sweet potatoes at Trader Joes.  I’m not sure the cost, but it was only a few dollars and 1 can lasted me for a whole week mixed amongst all these other options.

Veggies

1 Orgn Frzn Grn Beans       Costco             $6 ea.               $6

1 Organic Frozen Peas       Costco             $6 ea.               $6

1 Organic Frozen Corn      Costco             $6 ea.               $6

4 Bags Avocados                 Costco             $6 ea.               $16

Base Mixers

4 Cans H.B. Cereals – Albertsons       $4 ea.               $16

8/32 oz. Org Yogurts    Wal-Mart          $4 ea.                $32

You can also use scrambled eggs, pasta, and rice that you already have for bases to mix with purees.

From the above shopping list I’ve been able to mix and match ingredients to create meals like this:

Breakfast: Fruits and Yogurt or Cereal

Lunch: Fruits, Veggies, Yogurt and/or Cereal

Dinner: Veggies and Cereal and/or Meat from family dinner – pureed fish, turkey, chicken, or beef

Snacks: Finger food fruit pieces, crackers, dry cereal

To find out more about how I prepared and stored my homemade baby food, click here.

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Have you ever felt guilty about the food you feed to your babies?  I have.  All the time.  As I would sit there giving them scoop after scoop from a jar, some times forcing them to finish it I felt guilty because there was no way I would ever eat, or even taste much of the baby food I was making my little ones eat.

There was also no way I was ever going to make my own baby food.  At least, that’s what I thought.  I had two kids just fine who always ate their food from jars until they were old enough to eat with the rest of the family.  I had heard about people making baby food, but I thought that was reserved for Martha Stewart types with nothing else to do but twiddle their thumbs and make baby food.  Show offs! Huh. Not me.  Too much time and too much trouble.

Recently however I’ve been affected as so many of us have, by the economic downturn. I started paying attention to every penny spent because I was running out of pennies so frequently and needing to figure out where I could cut spending in order to spend elsewhere. I noticed that I was having a really hard time making my grocery budget each month and then I realized it was all due to baby food.  That’s right…. baby food!

All of a sudden I saw homemade baby food in a whole new light. I no longer considered it a ridiculous gourmet luxury created by well-to-do stay at home moms who wanted to show off. Instead I saw it as the only hope I had left to get my monthly grocery spending back in check. I had no idea if I could really save any money by making my own baby food, or how much I could save, but I knew I had to investigate it, because I couldn’t afford to keep buying the jars.

If I had kept buying those jars of wonderful organic baby food, I would have been spending $360.00 every two months just to feed my one year old.

No matter how great the savings, if I was going to make homemade baby food, it was going to have to be quick and easy to do.  I’ve already got way too much on my plate with home school, home making, church, three kids, a husband, and laundry.  Oh don’t get me started on the laundry!

Now that I’ve given it a try, I’ve learned that I can save a TON of money and I’ve learned that it is VERY easy to make your own baby food.  It has fit into my busy life VERY EASILY!  I am also starting to enjoy being in control of all the ingredients.  There are no chemicals or preservatives being snuck  into the food I’m making.  Everything I’m feeding my baby is stuff I would eat myself.

Bye bye guilty feeling.  Hello fresh affordable ingredients!

You don’t usually think of saving money and going organic as two things that work together. Usually you have to sacrifice one for the other.  AMAZINGLY… when it comes to baby food… I’m getting both.

Here’s is what one of the Costco bags of frozen veggies looks like.  I haven’t run out of one yet.  I know each will last for at least 2 months… maybe longer depending on how many different food options you are using each day.

Now the way I see it, depending on your personality type or the amount of time you have available, there are two ways you can prepare your baby food.

- You can take an afternoon and prepare all of it for the coming month.  For this option you will probably need about 4 hours, a large food processor, and several containers, ice trays, or muffin tins to freeze food in.

or

-  You can do like I’ve been doing, and each night when you are already in the kitchen preparing dinner, as you make green beans, peas, or corn to go with dinner, make the batch extra large. After dinner puree and freeze the left-overs, creating your baby food.  For this option any small food processor or blender will do, and you will only need one or two cupcake tins to freeze the food in and about fifteen extra minutes after dinner, twice a week.

(A lot of people use ice cube trays or Tupperware to freeze their baby food in.  This might be fine, however I have heard that there may be dangerous chemicals released from plastics into food and water when frozen, so I chose tin cupcake pans instead.  I also like the portion size of the tins better than ice cube size portions.)

Scoop the puree from the food processor into the cupcake tin to create your serving sizes.

Make sure to cover your tin or tray with plastic wrap to prevent freezer burn.

The next morning set your cupcake tin of baby food on the counter to thaw for about 5 minutes.  Then using the tip of a sharp pointed knife, slide the frozen food up and out of the tin.  This is very easy.  None of my food stuck to the trays at all, they just slid right out with no problems.

Next label and date a bag and fill it up with your servings sizes of frozen baby food.

I made my first batch of green beans on the same night when I made spaghetti for dinner.  So after dinner when I pureed and froze the green beans, I also pureed and froze some spaghetti.

By the next morning I already had enough Green Beans and Spaghetti frozen and ready to serve baby food dinners for two weeks.

All the meats and protein Llany has been getting have come from my regular dinners.  I’ve pureed chicken, turkey meat, ham, and spaghetti and given it to him at dinner time mixed with some of his frozen veggie purees.  I haven’t tried freezing any of the meats, but I’m sure at some point I will.

This is a website that I’ve found really helpful in giving tips about what kinds of things freeze and reheat well when making baby food, and what doesn’t.

The next night I made peas at dinner.

By the second morning after my first shopping trip for baby food ingredients I was well on my way to having plenty of healthy, organic baby food stored and ready to serve.

My favorite Rice Cereal to mix with fruits, proteins, and veggies is Happy Bellies.  You can learn more about that here.

One afternoon, Remy, my preschooler asked for some apples slices.  While I was cutting up her apple, I set the oven to 400 degrees and cut up 4 extra apples into slices, tossed them into a casserole dish, and popped them in the oven for 20 minutes.  I left the skin on them because that is where so much of the fiber is, and even with the skin, after they were baked they pureed just fine for a one year old. If you want to make pureed apples as a first foods for a 6 month old, you might opt. to leave the skins out of it for a smoother texture.  Also when making baby food for younger babies just add water to your purees to make them even smoother.

Apples were the only fruit I had to prepare ahead of time and make into a puree, freeze, and store.

For breakfast I usually give my baby fruit.  I take out two store-bought frozen strawberries, microwave them, mash them up, and add my favorite organic yogurt.

I also mash up fresh avocado, pear, and banana at meal times and add it to yogurt and/or rice cereal.

Another thing that has been easy to do is to take a few scoops of pumpkin or sweet potatoes out of a can and add it to yogurt, pasta, rice, or cereal.  I just store the leftovers in their can in the fridge with plastic wrap over it until the next time I need it; up to a week.

I would definitely consult your pediatrician before giving a vitamin to your child, but my kids have all been borderline anemic, so making sure that they get plenty of iron is a must.  In addition to giving lots of whole organic milk to drink and at least a serving of some type of green vegetable with dinner each day, I give Llany a dropper full of these baby vitamins with Iron.  This is available in the vitamin section at Wal-Mart.

Whenever I try to take on some kind of change in my lifestyle it seems far less daunting and intrusive to start out small.  All of this is just the beginning.  I’m hoping to add an even wider variety of ingredients to my baby food repertoire in the coming months.

And please don’t get me wrong!  I am in no way against jars of baby food.  I’ve still purchased a few from time to time to take with me on day trips or out to restaurants for a more convenient option.  I particularly like Earth’s Best organic baby food because it comes in glass jars instead of plastic, contains pure healthy ingredients, and comes in some great food combinations.

I just wasn’t able to afford jars of baby food as my only option anymore, and I’m so glad that I’ve discovered how inexpensive and easy it is to make homemade baby food.

I highly encourage you to GIVE IT A TRY!

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I like statistics.  They can be fascinating.  It’s always interesting to see how other people live and to see what, groups of people, think or feel.  I wish all statistics could be magically accurate.

I’m sure I must fall into all kinds of statistical categories.

- 1 of approximately 83 million Moms in America

- 1 of approximately 35 million Mom Bloggers in America

- 1 of approximately 1.5 million Home Schooling Moms in America

- 1 of approximately 83 million Moms in America who if they could choose to be any animal, would choose the octopus… we need more arms

(I made one of those up)

This year my hubby became a statistic too.

- 1 of approximately 2.5 million American’s to lose their job between January and September of 2009

Yep… my Einstein, bachelor of computer science, degree wielding, husband, is among the ranks of millions in this country now looking for a job.

This year I’ve had to revise, and watch our budget very closely.  I’ve been paying attention to how every dime is spent, and we’ve been doing ok, but all of a sudden in September I noticed I was really struggling to make my grocery budget.

When I sat down and analyzed it all, I found that I was taking extra trips to the grocery store in between my usual twice a month trips to Costco and Winco.  Each time I made those in-between trips I was spending money that I hadn’t budgeted for.

Finally this month I figured out what was happening.

It was all to blame on my one year old.

Yep. That’s right.  It’s all Llany’s fault.

That little growing sweetheart had started eating six jars of baby food a day, which of course I knew about, but hadn’t considered the extra cost.  Once I identified the culprit of my out-of-whack budget, I sat down and calculated how much I was actually spending on baby food.

Lany has been eating two, stage two, jars of baby food, per meal.  I stick with the Earth’s Best organic brand and those are usually between ¢.74 and ¢.99 each. With tax that’s about $6 per day x 30 days in a month… $180.00 to feed my one year old each month?!  What?!

Oh no no no no! This cannot continue. No! It most certainly can NOT!  Is this what I did with both my other kids??? Sheeeesh.  The things you miss, when not unemployed.

But then I thought…Seriously?  Am I seriously about to become one of those moms who makes her own baby food?

During my second pregnancy I saw a tiny little food processor on sale at the grocery store and bought it, thinking I might make some of my own baby food.  That happy little food processor has been in its happy little box, all this time, hidden waaaaaay back in my cupboard.  It’s not that the idea of making baby food had never crossed my mind. It was that now I was faced with really, actually, truly having to do it.

Yeah… I’ve been that mom.  The mom with good intentions and poor, poor delivery.

The mom who once in a while grabs a coupon, sticks it in her wallet, then completely forgets about it at the register.

The mom who thinks about hiding spinach in brownies to secretly shove vitamins and nutrients into her kids, but then makes the brownies late at night when the kids are in bed, skips the spinach, and eats the whole pan herself.

The mom who while pregnant sees books and talk shows where people make their own baby food and thinks, “My, how healthy. I’ll have to do that too.” But then the baby arrives and “instant” anything, dominates everything.

Yep that’s been me… but lately… I have been changin’ my ways.

I haven’t eaten a whole pan of brownies by myself in at least ten… okay six, months.

I’m going to start remembering to use coupons… I promise.

And yes… I have started making homemade baby food.

Thank you, thank you.  Oh you’re too kind.  No really I don’t deserve all the applause.  No really… Well ok. Go ahead then.  Yes…. Yes.  Thank you.  Thank you ever so much.

Later this month, I’ll share more about how I’ve been making my own baby food, how in the world I’ve found time to make my own baby food,  and how much money it has been saving me… if any.

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