Since Sam is 8 months old now he is starting to eat a little bit thicker textures and even a little chunky. There is a recipe in the baby food cookbook for "baby's stock" to be used in recipes like risotto and other heartier recipes. That being said, I got to thinking. When you steam veggies in the baby food cooker you have cooking liquid left over. Now, the food is not soaking in this liquid, it is just left over after the steam warms the food. However, this liquid is generally colored orange or green or blue, whatever you have been cooking so I am thinking that some of those precious water soluble vitamins are being lost. I started freezing this leftover liquid in the ice cube trays to put into my baby stock when I made it. Any of those water soluble vitamins that we lost during the original cooking will hopefully make it into the stock! Sometimes you won't have any leftover liquid to freeze because you will need it to thin down the food as you puree, like potatoes, or broccoli. Certain foods though like the zucchini, green beans, carrots, blueberries, are very watery and you will not need any liquid to help you puree. You can always use breast milk to thin down as well. I just didn't have a lot of milk to spare, so I didn't take any chances wasting it. Usually I would just stir in some of my milk after I warmed something up to thin it a little and cool it as well.
I wouldn't suggest using your milk if you plan on freezing the foods afterwards. Based on the latest research, freezing your breastmilk can lose some of the immunoprotective properties (please correct me if this has changed!). It would be just fine though if you were making only a 2 day supply and it would just be refrigerated. (Breastmilk is good for about 5 days once it is expressed/pumped). Happy cooking :)