Baby Food

Finger Foods

 

Felix is almost 11 months old and he wants to do it himself.  We're well entrenched in the finger food stage.  Here are some portable snacks he's enjoyed lately:

• frozen mango (That's what's in the bowl up there.  I buy the frozen chunks from Trader Joe's and then cut them up a bit smaller.  Frozen fruit makes a great teething food.)
• frozen blueberries (Messy, but popular.  Clean up the residue right away.  It will stain.)  
• cheerios (Have you checked the sodium content?  It's surprisingly high.  Not that a baby is having anywhere near a full serving, but still, it's something to be aware of.)
• whole grain crackers
• seed butter (That's what that brown blob is up there.  I'll share the recipe when I've had the chance to make it a few more times.  It turned out really thick so I made little cheerio-seed balls for him to pick up.)
• grilled zucchini 
• roasted eggplant
• cubes of cold tofu
• black beans
• avocado
• watermelon
• quartered grapes 
• whole grain pasta

Poor Second Born: Breakfast for the 10-month-old

 

I looked in the freezer this morning, wondering what the baby was going to have for breakfast.  I was pleased and surprised to find a bag of pureed prunes that I had somehow forgotten about.  My heart swelled as I realized that I really was a super-awesome-mom after all with magical stores of homemade baby food to nourish my child, until I opened it and discovered that it was frozen coffee.  

I think we'll stick with two kids.  I'm afraid if we had another we might send them around the corner to the McDonald's for breakfast.  

But earlier in the week, until I used up all the oats on cookies, Felix was eating a nice healthy breakfast of oats and raisins along with some chunks of fresh, peeled peaches.  I simmered 1/2 cup of rolled oats with a handful of raisins (1/4 cup?) in about 1 1/2 cups of water until they were soft (a few minutes).  I pureed them until chunky-smooth with the immersion blender. This made three days worth of breakfast for the baby.  I thinned it a bit with soy milk when I gave it to him, especially on days 2 and 3 as it thickens up quite a bit in the fridge.  

What does your baby eat for breakfast?  

My New Favorite Teether

I made a corn salad for a barbecue yesterday.  I roasted the corn under the broiler for 5 minutes, cut the corn from the cob, broke the leftover cobs in half, and then kept the baby occupied with what would have been trash for the entirety of dinner.  He happily sucked and slurped at the cobs with their leftover juices and tiny bits of corn.  When one fell in the sand, we chucked it in the trash and handed him another.  Season's best teether.  

Carrots

 

 In The Healthy Baby Meal Planner, Annabel Karmel recommends root vegetables like carrots and parsnips and sweet potatoes as ideal first vegetables for their gentle sweetness.  I vote them in for their ability to puree well.  I didn't bring it up before, but I have to tell you - that spinach didn't puree real smooth.  I considered straining it - I understand that's what responsible parents do - but I was so discouraged by the quantity that I was left with after I strained out all the little tiny fibrous bits that I threw it all back together.  Bad.  I know.  So I really think spinach is a better 7 month food or for once that baby can handle a bit of texture.  But carrots.  Carrots were an instant hit.  They're sweet and mild and it's easy to blend them up smooth.  It was such a refreshing change to finally have a bit of complete success.    

Also, you should know, I rarely peel carrots when they're just for us.  I just scrub them well, but for baby's delicate little tummy I do, and then it's the perfect occasion to make a big ol' pot of vegetable broth from the scraps.  Tonight the rest of us are having soup.  

 

Baby Carrots

• 1 pound peeled organic carrots
• water to cover

Chop carrots into somewhat even pieces.  In a medium saucepan, cover with water.  Bring to a boil.  Turn down a bit to a steady simmer.  Cook, covered, for about 25 minutes, until fork tender.  

Cool for about 10 minutes and put the carrots and their cooking liquid into a blender and puree until smooth (or use an immersion blender in the pan).  

Makes enough puree to fill an ice cube tray and have two (2.5 oz) servings in the fridge.

 

Spinach, and a Note on Bib Usage

 

Spinach makes a great, color-fast, all-natural food dye.  The used-to-be pristine off-white organic cotton onesie that Felix was wearing for his second taste of spinach (not pictured) will be getting a soak in spinach water so that its currently speckled green hue looks more intentional.  The spinach does not come out.  Use a bib, folks.

Baby Rice

 

So this time around has to be perfect.  This is the last (planned) baby I will feed. 

Eschewing the convenience of the baby rice cereal,  I cooked a pot of organic long grain brown rice and pureed it.  It was too chunky.  I simmered it with soy milk, vanilla, and sugar and the rest of us had rice pudding.

I cooked a pot of organic short grain brown rice.  I put some aside for our dinner, then added a lot more filtered water to the pot and simmered it for another hour so that it would be nice and soft and puree well.

It looked good - smooth, thin gruel consistency.  I fed it to the baby, as his very first food.  He hesitantly tolerated it, but then acted like he was coughing up teeny tiny hair balls as the undetected (by me) molecules of rice hit his throat.

I fretted about the eternal damage that I had done to his outlook on food and mixed the cold leftovers with more water, frozen banana, pineapple, spinach, and a little swirl of agave nectar to make a smoothie for the older brother.

I bought baby rice cereal.  And it was good.

Most of the baby's food will be homemade, but there will also be some compromises.  

(While there are as many different ways to introduce solids to an infant as there are published experts, our pediatrician recommends rice simply because hardly anyone is allergic to it.)  

 

 

What do I know?

I was mentally penning my entry on the day to day dining habits of the eleven month old when everything changed again. How many times will I learn that lesson? Just when I become a bit smug and comfortable, it's all new again, and Paul and I are left scrambling to catch up.

Desmond had been contentedly munching on sunflower seed butter sandwiches with a side of applesauce for several days in a row at lunchtime. Well, contentment is relative, because today I introduced grapes and good god, I'd forgotten how that boy can eat.

Variety truly is the spice of baby life. It's so exciting to watch him experience something new everyday.

Here are some other foods he has enjoyed this week:

oatmeal with a drizzle of blackstrap molasses and flaxseed oil, topped with soy or rice milk
cubed mango (thank you Ana)
a mash of split peas, frozen fresh peas, and spinach

Family Dinner, take 1

As Desmond becomes more and more interested in what we're eating and less and less interested in baby food, I've been making an effort to find more foods that will work for the whole family. And so last week we actually succeeded in sitting down to dinner together, two times! On Tuesday we had Japanese food. I made soba noodles, with a soy-mirin-wasabe dipping sauce for Paul and me, a carrot-avocado salad with a simple soy-rice vinegar dressing, and edamame. For Desmond I cut up some of the noodles with a bit of avocado and tofu mashed in. I even added just a tiny drop of the toasted sesame oil and rice vinegar to jazz it up. He loved it. We loved it. Everyone was happy.

This Week

Let's see...this past week four teeth finally broke through. He now has eight in all. This means that for this moment or at least that one back there where I was typing it, he is not teething.

Lately 10 1/2 month old Desmond has enjoyed eating:

soy yogurt mixed with a bit of agave nectar and fruit (defrosted mashed up blueberries, fresh peach, mashed pear, plum)

steamed zucchini

crackers and/or toast with sunflower seed butter

rice milk

whole wheat pita

Lunch

Lunch today was avocado mashed on crackers, steamed carrot sticks, and chunks of kiwi. He ate it all except for the inevitable stray cracker bits mashed into his chair and the tile grout. He also left behind two carrot sticks and is currently uninterested in kiwi, though to be fair it wasn't a particularly good one. Plus, his convictions tell him to eat locally.