I won, I won!!!

So, SD loves fruit snacks, which she so affectionately calls vitamins. (her vitamins are gummies, so she thinks everything gummy is a vitamin) Anyway, she asks for them all of the time and I know that although they are not the worst thing she could eat, they are not the best either. So, I decided to get out my baby food book* to see if they had a recipe for something similar.
*Super Baby Foods is one of the best books I ever got after having SD. My friend Mrs. MAN Fan Club recommended it to me and I will forever be indebted to her. It is not only so much healthier for your baby, but SOOOOO much cheaper. I am not the cook in our family and I was able to do it, so you can too! I didn't make everything SD ate (rice cereal) and don't do everything in the book, but it is really cool. I am convinced that is why SD loves her veges, because they taste like the baby food she ate since they were the real thing.

Okay, back to my story. So of course, the book had a recipe for fruit leather which is basically a fruit roll-up. I had some canned fruit that SD refused to eat in it whole form, so I rinsed the syrup off, and made it in to fruit leather and added some prunes, just to help her out a little! It took a while longer to dehydrate than I expected, but it was totally worth it. It was yummy and so much better than the processed and packaged stuff, not to mention cheaper.

At first SD was not sure about it because it wasn't shaped like Hello Kitty or Dora or Sharks. But last night I gave it to her again and she finally tried it and ate all that I gave her. She asked for it again this morning and I gave it to her again and she scarfed it down. We only have a couple packages left of the yuck stuff, so we will get rid of that and then it is no more! I made two kinds the other night, the peach (from the canned fruit) and some Strawberry/Blueberry with fresh/frozen fruit.

I had gotten really lazy on what I have been feeding SD and now I am trying to get back on track. I plan on doing a lot of stuff from that book (they have everything from baby food to toddler food to party ideas to activities) from now on. When I first started the book, I just read what I needed to in order to start making the food, now I am trying to go back and flag things I want to try that are different. I saw a recipe for peanut butter balls, granola bars and lots of other stuff that you can buy pre-packaged and processed, but why not make it yourself?!?!?! So, since I will be on a major health-kick after Linus' arrival, I figure the rest of my family can follow suit, it wouldn't hurt any of us to get a little healthier. Not to mention, it will be great for our bottom line (both actually and figuratively).