Taste Test

Sweet Pea Baby Food Review

When Natasha started eating solid foods, two things happened for me. The first was that I felt sad - she didn't need me as much anymore! This is ridiculous, of course, as she could barely sit up on her own at the time and still has not plans to stop breastfeeding. I felt a little sad, none the less.

Then I felt really depressed when the amount of time I spent devoted to food suddenly, steadily and drastically increased. If I'm not buying, chopping, peeling, or cooking food, then I am helping Natasha feed herself while making a list of what food to buy next. And considering this person who is half my height and a quarter my weight can still eat as much as I can, I am always trying to think of what to feed her next.

So when the lovely women at Sweet Pea Baby Food sent over some sample trays of organic butternut squash to try, I took advantage of the convenience of the prepared frozen food. The paper sleeve on the outside has a sticker with a best before date on it and houses the plastic 12-cube tray of food inside. The plastic wrap on top of the tray also has the best before date on it, so you don't have to worry about offering old food to your wee one.

Natasha was being finicky about trying the squash on its own, so I decided to try throwing it into the cooked apples and bananas that make up our shared breakfast. The squash melted down and mixed in with the fruit and added to the liquid of the mix making it almost a fruit soup - yum! The flavour blended perfectly and you could not even tell that there was anything but warm, hearty, fruity-sweet goodness in the bowl. Natasha and I ate the last drop.

Here's what our other taste testers, mama Justine and baby Wolfe, had to say:

"My second baby, Wolfe, at just shy of six months, was already starting to voice great displeasure at not being included at dinner. Rather than start with commercial rice cereal, which, like most commercially prepared baby food, is tasteless, textureless and usually not organic, I won't feed my children something that I won't eat myself. I was pleasantly surprised at how good this organic butternut squash tastes. Not only that, but the texture of the squash is also nice. Better yet, Wolfe liked it too! He ate a whole serving, which is a lot considering it was only the third meal of his life.
 
"I like that the food is organic and does not contain anything other than butternut squash and water. It is conveniently packaged in one tablespoon servings that are frozen into cubes. The directions for reheating are to use a microwave or a double boiler. I don't use a microwave, and there is no way I am putting together a double boiler to reheat one or two tablespoons of food. I simply defrosted the cubes in the refrigerator and then heated in a saucepan. Since the water separates out of the cubes, you really do have to heat the squash thoroughly to remix it and restore the proper texture. However, I didn't find that to be a chore.
 
"Having said this, I did have a few objections to the product, namely, the price ($7.69 at the Market on Millstream) and the amount of packaging. Each package contains 12 frozen cubes about the size of a tablespoon in a plastic tray inside a cardboard container, so it seems there is more packaging than actual food in each one."

Find out how to use Sweet Pea products in meals for older babies and children on their tips page.

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