I can't begin to express how much I love this machine. It has made weaning so easy. You just choose the food you want to prepare, chop it up, add water and turn it on. Then when it's done steaming (the machine turns itself off which is handy if you've become distracted by your little bundle of joy), you flip the container over, and puree away. Contrary to the description it does NOT have 3 pureeing speeds, but if you want lumpier food you just puree for less time.
All the parts (except the motor, obviously) can be washed in the dishwasher, but there's only a few parts to clean so I find it easy to do by hand.
It comes with a handy recipe book which has some nice ideas. The instruction manual also has a table of suggested steaming times for a range of fruit/vegetables/proteins, which takes the guesswork out. You then just add the right amount of water: e.g. 100ml for 10 mins, 150ml for 15 mins and so on. You don't have to do just one type of food at a time, for example, there's a recipe for baby bolognaise where you put the meat and veg in all at once, steam, then puree.
As others have said, the machine is not huge, but I find it sufficient. To give you an example, I fill it to the "max" line with apples, and find that gives me about 14 x 30ml ice cubes worth. I don't have a huge freezer so that's more than enough. I started using the machine a couple of weeks before we started weaning so by the time my baby was ready I already had a freezer drawer full of cubes of different fruit and veg, which I now mix and match each day to give her a varied diet (I use freezer bags to store cubes to avoid having to buy loads of ice cube trays and save space).
You can use the machine for fruit, veg, fish and meat. You can also use it as a steamer only, or to puree only, which makes it very versatile.
It really makes the whole steaming/pureeing process so simple: no hassling with pans and separate blenders. Also steaming is much healthier than boiling, apparently, because more nutrients in the food are preserved. I really like the fact that I know all my baby's food is homemade with no additives and (for the most part) organic.
My only slight criticism is that the puree function is quite loud. That means it's hard to use when the baby is asleep, and if I use it when she's in the room it terrifies her and she starts crying so I can't do that either. I work around this by popping her in another room with a toy for the 30 seconds or so it takes to puree.
After watching many other mums I know struggle with weaning, I'm so glad I have this machine. I recommend it to others as a way of simplifying the whole process. And of course you can use it after weaning is done - I've already used it to make creamed spinach for the adults in the family!
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