Food Prepping For A New Baby

When my sister called to let us know that she was having a second baby and to ask for some much needed assistance with baby-sitting my 2 year old nephew, I not only said yes, but immediately dived into the morass of information that is the Internet to hunt up some helpful tips and recipes to help stock up my sister and brother-in-law’s freezer so they can have it easier.  What triggered the knee-jerk reaction was a very clear memory of my mom and dad food-prepping before my mom had my 2 younger brothers (at different years!).
Granted - our freezer was smaller and couldn’t hold a lot; and also the range of choices wasn’t much either given our tight budget.  But it definitely meant that my parents could forget about meal-planning at least for a few weeks when sleep (or lack thereof) and young children on top of a newborn were a perilous juggle.

Some very useful tips are:

• Make sure there is food prepped that you can eat one-handed (for the breastfeeding mommy)
• Make sure to prep for breakfast and lunch - dinner is usually what people prep for and forget about the first 2 meals of the day.
• Have a lot of healthy snacks handy - especially when there are going to be a lot of doctors’ appointments and check-ups in the first few months.

Some of the meals I’m going to try and help make sure will be available in their freezer are:

• Breakfast: egg cups, breakfast burritos, individual smoothie packs, English muffin breakfast sandwiches, oatmeal cups (spices in some and fresh fruit in others to jazz it up), 
• Lunch: sandwiches, wraps, onion tartlets (it was a passing joke from the Friends’ show, but it’s now on the list), chili, burger patties, stuffed peppers, pizza pockets, pastry wrapped sausage bites, pastry-wrapped meatballs, shrimp and cheese croissant sandwiches, pasta with vegetable infused sauce
• Dinner: Shepherd’s pie, baked chicken, lasagna, teriyaki chicken, bag of frozen stir fry veg and various pre-cut meats, marinated meats so they can bake/roast/slow cook themselves. 
• Snacks: granola bars, fruit and nut bars, banana bread & muffins, lemon loaf & muffins, zucchini bread sticks, mozzarella bread sticks, lactation cookies (for the breastfeeding momma), rice krispy snacks (for Victor), fruit and jelly cups
• Drinks: Sliced citrus fruits preserved in sugar in the fridge - they can add the slices to water and have refreshing, flavoured water later on. Hot chocolate, tea, coffee

I’m also going to attempt making some frozen baby food so that my sister won’t have to worry about making them on the 4th month.  Foods like single grain cereals, puréed vegetables, fruits, puréed meats and then freeze them in ice-cube trays, transferring them later into labeled ziploc bags ready for consumption.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to accomplish all of the items on this list - but I’ll try to plough through at least 75% of it.  Most of these will be homemade so they’d better get the extra large ziploc bags ready!  :)

I’m looking forward to meeting the little one in January and can’t wait to fly out to Ontario.  Let’s hope that travel won’t be restricted and these plans can come to fruition.  :)