jars/pots of baby food in the US?

[CurleyShirley]

Hello all, not sure if this is the right board for this, but hoping some seasoned travellers will be lurking and able to advise. In two weeks I am going to stay with relative in the US with my DD 9 months. I'll have the opportunity to shop and cook for her when I am there, but I also would like to ask my relatives to get some jars of food in for the first 24 hours or so. When I give my DD non-home-cooked food here I go for Plum Baby or Hipp Organic. Does anyone know if these are available there (doubt it!) or if not what are the brands that are non-additive, organic etc etc? Thanks anyone!

Gerber do an organic range
There is another called Earth's Best

Thanks theblonde - do you know if these are available in regular supermarkets like Lowes, Walmart etc?

They are avaliable in Walmart and Whole Foods if that helps.

You can get organic jarred foods. I was never a big jar user, but what I did find was that they maintained the puree phase for an awful long time there.

Another odd (but good) thing was that you could get pure () fruits and veggies, so a jar of just sweet potato, for example, without added extras. I thought this was a good thing if you were trying to avoid foreign proteins (no hidden milk powder or gluten).

By the time my babies were 9 months, we just had family foods, suitable chopped.

They were available in the large supermarkets
Small ones seemed to depend on the neighbourhood
All the flavours are quite different to here but they do some nice simple ones like ScienceTeacher mentions

thanks, really helpful everyone. she wont quite be 9 months when we go - am generally quite chilled out about bits of food I give her, but in preparing for the worst re jet lag etc if I know that the first 24 hours there is food on tap (that I wont worry is full of sh*t) - so much the better!

interesting re them keeping them on purees for longer, scienceteacher.

I found finger foods, rusks, biscuits and rice cakes hard to find - all the US ones seemed v flavoured and processed

Whole Foods are best for snack type foods - wholewheat breadsticks, organic yoghurts, animal cookies and plain rice cakes (large ones only, but easily broken down). If your daughter eats Weetabix that is available in Trader Joes/Giant/Safeway. When I first arived here my youngest was 9 months and we survived a good 3 days on weetabix/toast/cheese/natural yoghurt/smoothies/avocado/bananas/sweet potatoe etc until I had the chance to cook properly. He never took to the jars here after the lovely HIPP organic ones in the UK, they seem rather flavourless and much more pureed here.
and don't worry too much about jet-lag, it is always worse going from the US to the UK...
Have a lovely trip!

thanks twirl! good to know re the jetlag too - pleased to hear it is better coming back (rather deal with a baby up all night at home!).
Any tips for dealing with it timewise? We leave heathrow at about midday on the saturday, and with a 9 hour flight (we are going to North Carolina) we arrive about 4pm. I guess I put her to bed as usual at 7ish and hope for the best?!

I am an 8 hour flight away (DC) and we always put the kids onto american time as soon as we arrive here. They are generally exhausted but seem to make it through the extra hours until bedtime (perhaps with a strict 1 hour nap). They usually end up having an extra mini-meal too. You should be prepared for a few early morning wakenings though until she adjusts. It may not be worth adjusting the whole 4/5 hours though if you are only here for a short visit and can cope with getting up early? Each time we have done the trip I have been surprised by how quickly the kids have adjusted to the time difference - kids are really adaptable, you will be the one who is tired!
Also, CVS (if there is one near you) will have a whole baby aisle with food, milk, nappies etc.
Formula milk brands are all different from the UK though, not sure whether this will affect you...

Thanks Twirl, thats really really helpful. We are about a 1.5hr drive from the airport (Raleigh) so perhpas I'll let her sleep for some of that drive (am sure she will doze off) and then keep her up and put her to bed as normal. Yes there is a CVS in town (I spent most of my summers there growing up - and since! - so know it well, but this is the first time I am going with my dd!) - thats great to know thats the place for food and nappies etc. And thank you, my family have said they couldnt find Aptamil, which is the formula I use, so going to stick a box in my case!
We are there for 2 weeks, going to my family's beach house for 10 days or so so may well do as you say and not try and adjust her for the full difference. Or maybe just go for a later bedtime, which would mean we could go out for earlyish dinner and take her too.
Thanks for your advice!

You are more than welcome. Just shout if anything ese occurs to you.
Have a great holiday!

Hi Twirl! Or anyone else that might know! I now have a question about car seats, if you are still around! We are planning to take our maxi cosi car seat (she is still just in the stage 1 seat) - to use on the plane and in my family's car. Do you have any experience of this? Will our car seat definitely be able to fit into an american car (ie will seatbelts be long enough??) - and is it OK to use our car seat on the plane? We have booked our DD a seat (know from experience that those particular flights get v v busy and didnt want to risk her on our lap for the entire flight).
Thanks!

Curley,
We took our car seat last year. Used it on the flight and it was fab. Also had no problems with it in our rental car.
Second what others have said about Gerbers jars and also Trader Joes being a fab store for lovely healthy snacks as well as great wine and not so healthy snacks!
We found that most supermarkets had stuff that we were willing to use. You can also buy dried baby food that you mix up with formula milk and our son who was 9 months at the time was fine and ate really well (though his best meal was at a small Italian restaurant in San Fransisco where he scoffed incredible amounts of pasta in hare sauce!....)
Have a great time.

Brilliant, thanks Spub! Glad to hear reassurance on the car seat and food.
Hope I dont sound like too much of a worrier; I dont worry toooo much, but think its all part of the aniticpation of the trip really, thinking everything through and planning etc!!

Not at all. The planning helps with the anticipation, plus I dunno about you but I find it easier to deal with everything if I do my research first.
You'll have such a good time!

Hello
We haven't been allowed to use our car seat on flights - Virgin gave us a booster seat to strap ds into and the car seat had to go in the hold. I was told this was their policy. Who are you flying with? You should phone the airline and check.

we are flying with American. (Hate them, generally think their customer service is rubbish, but they are the only airline to fly direct from London to Raleigh/Durham.) It says on their website that they allow car seats if they are 'approved'. Not sure if they will think our European Maxi Cosi is 'approved' or not - but presumably they'll just give us a restraint thing once on the plane if they dont like it.

We flew to Mexico via the US a few years back, don't remember which airline ... but they didn't HAVE restraints. They didn't HAVE them. I was meant to make sure DS2 was on my lap all the time (because, yeah, in turbulence, I AM strong enough to keep hold of him, absolutely).

They arsed us about with the luggage allowances, too.

Oh, about the OP, you can get little pots of pure absolute apple sauce in normal super markets. It's not marketed as baby food, it's just food. North Americans like apple sauce.

Curley,
We flew American and our Brittax car seat was fine, TBH, they didn't even look at it - just let us do all of the lugging and Fixing.
This was Lon-LAX so a Loooooong flight!

Fab, thanks everyone. Thats what I think about American. Have always found their cabin crew really not v friendly (bit general, I realise, but thats my impression on the whole) so thought either they will be a*sey about it, or they will just ignore and elt us get on with it. Glad to hear your experience spub, and hoping that will be the case with us.

Thanks for the tip on the apple sauce NQC - of course, my family eat apple sauce all the time. With everything. And laugh at me when I try and tell them I dont really like the whole sweet/savoury combo!!!