purees: anybody have ideas?

[tzs]

my 9mo eats what we eat...regular food...but also gets something like 50 jars of fruit and veggie purees from WIC every month. i know i could just not get them but i've taken it on as my personal project this month to be super crafty frugal mom and make food from these purees.

so far i've got popsicles, maybe some dark rye toast with carrot spread would be good, i'm thinking pasta with pea puree sauce and some cracked black pepper and ricotta. i made some muffins but they weren't all that amazing in the "good-for-you" department.

any ideas? does anyone have good healthier recipes taking purees? pancakes? muffins? carrot cake? recipes with applesauce? soups? (i'm not one of those "agave and flax seed" type people but i'm thinking something without too much sugar and oil is out there!)

[Knitting Mama]

Applesauce is a great ingredient to use to replace oil in baked goods recipes. I used to make fabulous muffins made with yogurt and applesauce in place of oil. I will try to dig up the recipe for you, but if I recall correctly, you can substitute the same amount of applesauce for oil. It works for quick breads and muffins and cakes pretty well, just don't try to make cookies by replacing the butter with applesauce!

[hakeber]

Do you get to choose the brand and the flavors, or is it a set list, or what?

Because the fruit flavors are just fruit, aren't they? So you could make apple butter, or spread it in sheets and dehydrate it and make fruit leathers, or put it in the middle of whole wheat cookie dough and make your own fruit newtons...or is the kind with lots of modified cornstarch, in which case I would write to WIC and ask that they replace the jarred food for and equivalent dollar amount of fresh fruit instead so you can make your own fruit purees. Actually I might do that anyway.

Maybe things are different here in Costa Rica but for the cost of one jar of banana baby food I could buy 12 bananas...maybe baby food is much cheaper in the States...It wouldn't surprise me at all.

[tzs]

i wish you could replace it with a bigger fruit check. up until this month they only allowed gerber which isn't kosher anyway so we didn't use them. for most things they allow exceptions (we get special milk and cheese) but they wouldn't for the baby food. this month they started allowing beech nut which has some kosher flavors although they don't allow some of them (peach and mango being prohibited, for example, i dunno why) and looks to be just fruit and water.

fruit leather is definetely something i haven't thought of yet! love it!

[texaspeach]

I made a bunch of purees before we realized ds doesn't like them. I stir the fruit flavors into yogurt or hot cereal. vegetable flavor can go in meatloaf/meatballs or spaghetti sauce.

[Nicole730]

I used up DS' frozen cubes of fruit in baked goods or smoothies. And the veggies I added to mashed potatoes and soup.

[mojobin]

Yeah I was thinking freeze the fruit in ice cube trays and use them in yogurt smoothies. I don't know what to do with the veggie ones, maybe use them in soups?