Fruits have been my favorite introduction so far. It’s like making jam for my kid. Finally I can be the good cop parent. Not the parent stressing that he has all nine servings of green vegetables a day. Or that his food contain no salt or sugar is completely organic and chemical/unpronounceable word-free all while having less than 4 ingredients. I mean too many components and you will have things like xanthen gum in your jarred food, which is yes, pronounceable, but totally not a word I use on a weekly yearly lifely basis. So why feed it to my kid? Exactly.

Continued over here »

Not to wax nostalgic here, but applesauce and I go way back. My mother started me off on applesauce when I was ready for first foods and the lunch tradition carried on until high school when I brown bagged it to school. Except it was never just applesauce. It had to be speckled heavily with cinnamon. Or as my family likes to say: our applesauce needed to be dressed.

Perhaps it’s a bit silly, then again I was six and this would send me into a fit of giggles, but it is an unwavering law in  my family, passed down from generation to generation, that applesauce is naked until dressed in cinnamon. Restaurants, grocery stores, they never get it right. My great grandmother always toted around a small canister of cinnamon wedged in her purse that unfortunately needed to be pulled out to save the despairingly speckle-sparse white pureed applesauce served to us during lunches out. If my family is snobby about anything it’s the fact that applesauce is not applesauce until there is a healthy, thick cinnamon jacket. Cinnamon was made for applesauce. Applesauce was made for cinnamon. It’s simple. Those are the facts.

Continued over here »

As with most introductory first foods, this one is rather plain and simple. A few zucchini simmered in broth then pureed until velvety. Perhaps if I found my love for zucchini before I introduced our tiniest mouth to its charm I would have come up with something a little more interesting then plainy plain jane summer squash. I would have thrown in a handful of microplaned parmesan, a few flecks of basil or thyme and the tiniest smidge of garlic and splash of lemon. Instead, I was in a rush and knew nothing of the things that could make zucchini sing.

Continued over here »

Alright folks. We’re going to play a round of catch up with a baby food blitz. Are you ready? I still have to tell you about baby’s first foods, and our introduction to fruits and second and third stage foods because the little guy is already starting on finger foods and my to-do list of things to tell you is practically drowning me.

After our gleeful spinach introduction followed by pea introduction I decided green beans would be next. Green beans were perhaps the one green vegetable I knew would be hastily eaten without a single complaint, but the thought of mushy green beans sounded, in a word, bleh. I’m finding baby is not at all a texture eater (like his mama). Or at least, he is not yet. He puts just about everything in his mouth (shoe soles watch out, you’re the current favorite) and though green beans cooked until slush sounds unappetizing to me, he, I’m sure would have no problem with it.

But here’s the thing. I have a problem (in the words of my husband) to make sure that he likes, loves and enjoys every single food I offer up to his tummy god. It’s not a ego thing, where I need him to like my food. Just a thing of, I don’t want him to be a picky eater. I don’t want him to be like me (and some of my friends) who only eat three vegetables: potatoes, pasta and cheese. I don’t want to have “eat your vegetables or else” ultimatums. My childhood had enough for the next three generation’s lifetimes.

Continued over here »

Now that we are back from vacation and have had sufficient time to ease ourselves back into our normal routines without fear of impending teeth popping through gums, I’ve been simmering up a baby food blitz. It was a month ago, and forgive me if I am going on about our situation as if we went through Hurricane Katrina or the earthquake/tsunami in Japan back in 2011. I know losing power for almost four days is nothing in comparison. It did however bump our little world just enough that we are still trying to repair the damage. The damage being my kid thinking he is being tortured at meal time. You see, all the baby food I had so carefully made, froze and tucked neatly into my freezer’s crevices was lost. I could have spent the remaining few days before vacation whipping up enough goo to get us through our week at the beach, but I decided to not stress about it and instead pick up a few purees from the store.

Continued over here »