Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program My wife and I decided to make our own baby food than buying them in jars. Not only is it cheaper, but we also get to buy more healthful food for our infant daughter. From organic peas to raw bananas, our daughter receives pure unadulterated food appropriate for her age, and is actually easier on our wallets.
We've been using a blender and ice trays, but decided to get a set dedicated only to making baby food.
Overall, we think the set is okay, better if you don't have any of the items in the set. We have other items from Munchkin, but, like those items, we could see ourselves preferring our original products over them. In that, the masher and chopper are good for smaller bits, whereas our blender can take pretty much any size. The steamer is a great tool, though my in-laws recently gave us a dedicated standard steamer. The ice trays will probably take the most use, as they're not as large as our other ice trays, taking up much less real estate in the freezer.
You can do without this if you already own a blender with puree settings and ice trays, which I'm sure most people do. The steamer is a nice addition, though not necessary.
Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program I had use this for making baby food for my 6 month old baby and I have to say these products are pretty useful but not perfect. First, the Grinder was nice to have for certain foods but some of the foods did not grind very well not really sure why, I might have been doing something wrong at certain times. Love the idea but I guess this was just not one of those things that I really needed. Thought it would make food prep for baby easier then getting then little blender out, but it did not, just as many things to clean and takes more man power to use. It is nice for when we go to restaurants though. I have a feeling the people who said the "grinder is too hard to turn" did not cook the food soft enough and for those reviewers who said "it's wobbly and gets food all over the counter" did not tighten the handle after washing it before the first use. When tightened correctly it locks into place perfectly.
I take a frozen veggie or two, heat a few pieces at a time and then add oats and formula. I can grind the whole thing with this product and even serve in the same bowl. Perfect. Yes this is not a product for someone who wants a very fast feeding. Save your pre-packaged meals for those days. But for fresh, cooked (soft) vegetables ground into easy-to-eat texture for a little one, this is ideal. Buy it, tighten the handle well, and cook the food soft before using it and you'll really love it! As for the tray, I made several combinations of food and liked that I could store individual servings in each compartment in the tray. As other reviewers said, the food doesn't really just pop out but I slid a butter knife in and they came out fine. I'm not sure how airtight it is because there is a bit of frost on the top of the food. I really love the blue color and how it matches all the other products in the set and them stacking on top of each other is helpful for my small freezer. Overall, it serves the purpose I wanted it to.
The Chop & Steam gadget is not bad either the Chopper lets you quickly chop food and steam it in your microwave. It's much easier than using knives, especially if you're still sleep deprived. Removing the chopper blade for cleaning is a little tricky, however you need to be careful. With the Mash-After your food is chopped and steamed, you put it in the grinder to make it the desired texture. The grinder is totally hand operated, so it was a little hard for me to use since I have a touch of carpal tunnel in my left hand. Since all of the pieces in the system are sold separately, you could just skip this and use a blender if you wanted. Lastly for the Store area, once you're done, Munchkin has click and lock freezer trays that you can sue for storing your food. They are about the size of ice cube trays, which ends up being the perfect portion size for your little one. They have a wonderful storage lid that prevents freezer burn and covers the entire tray so you can easily stack them in your freezer. You can also buy special storage cups and a device for making freezer popsicles for your baby.
If you're serious about making your own baby food, these tools are definitely worth checking out. You'll easily regain your initial investment by not having to buy jars of baby food at the supermarket every week.
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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program This is, quite honestly, the WORST baby product I have EVER used. The grinder/blender is terrible. It barely does anything. The chopper is so difficult to use, even after steaming, that it's just useless.
The only thing that works as stated is the ice cube tray, but really, how hard is that? You can get those for $1 and that's that.
What works better? It's simple. . . use a regular steamer (either microwave, electric, or in a pot with boiling water), a food processor or small baby food blender (which are no more than $15), and either store the baby food in the ice cube trays or in tupperware/jars.
Much simpler, much cheaper, much more effective.
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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program So..... Martha, how have you been? Oh, got a baby and he/she is eating solids? Terrific! Do yourself a favor and buy the Munchkin Fresh Feeding Starter Set! It's a terrific starter set for making your own baby food. It's a LOT of plastic and you are looking at a LOT of elbow grease but HEY! You're Martha.
Now, don't overlook the Munchkin Fresh Feeding Starter Set even if you aren't handy dandy in the kitchen and aren't terribly thrilled about HARD, hard work to feed your baby. It's still a good place to start.
Use the Munchkin Baby Food Grinder to see if you have the time, patience and determination to make your own baby food. If you find that you do, great! Now do yourself a favor and discard the Munchkin Fresh Food Chopper and Steamer and the Munchkin Baby Food Grinder because they are utter crap and get yourself the good stuff. The food tray is very useful and well worth the price of admission though, so keep that.
The Fresh Food Chopper is flimsy and will never replace a decent blender. The "blades" of the Chopper cuts with the sharpness of a butter knife and you will find yourself exerting a whole lot of effort if the food isn't finely chopped by hand first. Uh... which kind of defeats the purpose of having a tool that chops. I'm getting a headache...
The Grinder is also flimsy and mostly plastic so you are looking at something breaking sooner rather than later and really, it takes some effort on your part to grind the food to a nice tasty pulp that baby will dine on. Toss it as soon as you like the idea of feeding your baby food that you've made yourself. Get a blender.
Kind of recommended if you don't have a blender, are into manual labor, or really, REALLY like plastic. A lot.
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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program With our first child, we opted by and large for making our own baby food instead of purchasing the pre-made baby foods. Partly because you get to see directly what goes into the food, partly for savings, as jars of baby food can add up in cost quite fast, and partly for convenience. It also seems to have worked well in getting our child to eat relatively the same food that we do, so that not as much extra preparation goes into meals. We had purchase just a simple grinder, like the one in the Munchkin Fresh Feeding Set. The only difference was the strainer plate on the old one was plastic, and this Munchkin set has a metal strainer. The chopper/steamer is a nice addition to make the job quicker and easier, reducing the cutting and knife-work involved in preparing the baby food. The hard plastic arm has a grid of plastic teeth that push the food through a sharp metal grid. The photo shows carrots being chopped, and since that's the hardest vegetable we typically cook with, we gave it a try. In order to chop hard veggies like raw carrots, we found that you had to at least halve the thicker pieces of carrot, or cut 1 to 1 1/2 inch chunks. But the chopper is sturdy and cut them well. Under normal use, the plastic teeth of the chopping arm are small enough that they should not come into contact with the metal chopping blade. However, because we initially used pieces of carrot that were too large, I did notice a single small shaving of plastic that had ended up in the chopped food, because it had undoubtedly grazed the blade while we are chopping. Obviously you don't want to get that in the food, so be sensible about the size and hardness of the food you are chopping. If the blade doesn't easily slice it, the pieces are too large.
The next step was steaming, which was quick and easy in the microwave, just add a couple of teaspoons of water...don't forget to remove the metal blade, close the lid, and a couple of minutes later you have steamed veggies that can be dumped into your grinder and processed into healthy and fresh baby food. The grinder requires a good deal of downward pressure (though this depends on the texture of the food also), but produces a nice even puree. A minor detail we noticed both with this grinder, and our old one, is that a small amount of juice tends to leak out around the base. The rubber washer stops most, but not all the liquid from coming out. So consider your working surface. The white plastic steamer basket stained almost immediately from the carrot juice, but no harm done.
Finally, the storage trays are basically a glorified ice cube tray with a cover, but makes for a compact and organized way of storing your baby food, instead of multiple mixed jars hidden in every corner of your freezer. Overall this is a handy little set, and is an economical and healthy way to feed your baby!
With a newborn, having a bottle warmer is essential. Purchased several other bottle warmers and had to return them, because they did not have the auto shut off function, which is especially dangerous in the wee hours of the morning if you forget to switch off or unplug.
