The Best of the New York Baby Show: Making Little Foodies

Sage Spoonfuls baby food system

Every year, the New York Baby Show introduces a host of dazzling new products, but some of them are destined for the scrap heap of useless paraphernalia. This year, a focus seems to be on feeding your baby healthy, fresh food, with services and products dedicated towards making that possible.

Best in show

Here are my top picks from the New York Baby Show:

Reusable food pouch

D-I-Y: Squeezing it all in

Sage Spoonfuls makes it easy to go homemade with a complete baby food system: steamer, lending stick and glass or plastic storage jars. But what jazzed me was the reusable food pouches. You can make your own purees in bulk, freeze them, and brining these along on car trips or stroller outings. The pouches open from the side, and seal up like a Ziplock bag, so you don't have to funnel a puree in from the top. Then the pouch works just like any other baby food pouch, with a screw top and relatively un-messy way for your toddler to self feed.

And this is not just for little kids. My youngest daughter loves applesauce and all through high school, I would buy her applesauce pouches for breakfast on the go. Since we always go apple picking in the fall, and I make big batches of applesauce, I would have loved to have these refillable pouches.

She might have balked, though at the little kid graphics: monkey, giraffe, dinosaur or polka dots. Then again, she was eating baby food on the subway.

The pouches are dishwasher safe; supposedly, they stand up to 50 washes, on the top rack. They can also go in the microwave.

Baby Tripster travel food container

Graduating to a spoon or fork

Some adults I know find squeeze pouches infantilizing - even for children - and prefer that kids eat with a spoon or fork. Baby Tripster is for them. These leakproof food travel containers have  attached lids so the tops won't get lost, and the BPA-free plastic is dishwasher safe. There's a separate compartment to hold the double sided utensil (fork at one end, spoon at the other). It's microwave safe, so you can use it at home to feed your toddler soup or mac and cheese, too.

No time to make baby food? No problem

Smushed Organics homemade baby food

If buying, prepping and cooking baby food is beyond your time or interest, you can still feed your baby top quality food. Smushed Organics delivers homemade baby food cooked in Brooklyn in small batches,  with local, seasonal produce emphasized. Weekly deliveries are made in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Hoboken, and Jersey City

The purees come in glass jars and if you recycle the jars with Smushed, you get a discount on your next order.

There are smooth purees for babies six months and older, with classic likes apples or sweet potatoes, or "little explorer" purees like sweet potatoes, carrots & curry. The textured purees, for eight months and up, might have apples with rolled oats, or broccoli, roasted garlic, barley, olive oil and parsley.