Homemade vs jars/ sachets

[lolalei3]

Just wondering which is easier/ cheaper as I have been making and freezing her food for a couple of weeks now and it is easy at the moment as she is only eating small amounts and one or two ingredients of fruits or veg but soon will need meats, chickens and pastas and I'm a hopeless cook! Oh and I eat ready frozen meals so was wondering for those who have done both which do you find more convenient?

 

[hel_5]

Mine have homemade BUT I can cook and love to cook, I'm trying now to make meals that are suitable for the whole family which makes it v cheap, even when I'm cooking food just for DS it's still a lot cheaper than jars xx

 

[fidgets mammy]

well im in the same dilemma. with my son everything was homemade, with these two im finding
1 = i dont have the time to keep making their meals
2 = its costly buying normal shop, packed lunch shop, and foods siutable for the twins.

ive swallowed my snobby pride n bought jars to coincide with homemade.

ive decided i need to stop giving myself added pressure when i already have enough

 

[dizz]

I mix and match - if I'm cooking something suitable or easily adaptable (like a casserole I'll take a bit out before adding things like wine to the adult portions, or pasta dishes I'll pull some of the sauce out and make a batch with more baby-friendly pasta pieces) then I'll do an extra large batch of it and freeze a load of pots of it as baby-ready-meals (I tend to freeze stuff in washed yoghurt pots with foil lids - seems to make a decent sized portion for her and we long since moved past the point where ice cubes would be big enough), or if I'm running low on what's in the freezer (I have a freezer drawer for baby-meals) I'll do a batch cook of a couple of simple recipes (I use a lot of Annabel Karmel ideas)... again I'll pack them into yoghurt pots and freeze them to keep the drawer stocked up, along with things like small portions of lasagna, spag bols, mild chilli and the like - but I don't cook with salt added anyway, so it's just really taken changing the stock cubes we use for lots of these things.

Then I'll also have a stock of jars in - for days I forget to take stuff out of the freezer in advance, or when we're out and about (some places get stroppy if you ask them to heat food that's not branded and sealed), or just for a bit more variety - depends how we're feeling really - I use the freezer stash to keep costs down more than anything else.

At the moment I've got a lot of jars in (more so than usual) in case I go into prem labour again and people need to look after the Big Little Miss in an emergency.

 

[eulmh82]

I cook all our meals from scratch anyway so he just has extra of what we have. However I bought a salmon filet for £2 and his made him 13 meals with potatoes, veg and a cheese sauce - all cheap stuff. It's really much cheaper to make their own meals