my own little Popeye

when punkin started eating solid foods, beyond the prerequisite cereal, el Jefe' and i made the conscious but uneducated (we had no idea what we were doing) decision to make his own food. i'd read the What To Expect series, and "Baby Wise" (Volumes 1 and 2!), and they hinted at making your own baby food. how hard can it be? we bought a baby food processor that looks rather like the Bullet (don't let the term "processor" fool you, it was like 16 bucks, and supposedly came with recipes which was a lie) and some carrots, oh, and a steamer (clam shell? the cheap kind that opens like a flower) and a cheap pan because we were afraid the feet on the cheap steamer would scratch our JC Penney-version of a calphalon sauce pan. we had owned the set less than two years, and for the first time we weren't cooking with divorce-ware (a bunch of mis-matched pots and pans we had inherited from previous marriages - certainly a topic for another post).

we steamed the carrots and ground them to mush, and nearly held our collective breaths for fear punkin would choke on every morsel we put up to his mouth. i mentioned this to my middle sister (who has twins) and she suggested "Super Baby Food" by Ruth Yaron as the ultimate guide to baby food preparation. there is no doubt it is the ultimate guide. Ruth provides recipes (even for boiling water, i kid you not), handy household hints, and a month-by-month listing of foods appropriate for you child's digestive developmental stages. by the way, carrots are NOT the best first food. i skipped a lot of information, which is sort of my parenting style, but neither middle sister nor i attempted Super Porridge. i also did not opt for organic fruits and vegetables. punkin has not grown a third arm, so i think i've come through that decision unscathed (so far). (lest you think i'm a bad mother, he does drink organic milk now, which is twice the price of gas.)

making your punkin's own food is very easy ... you steam it or nuke it, you grind the shit out of it, and then you freeze it in manageable portions (she recommends ice cube trays, another step we skipped, instead using take n' toss Gladware-like products that we have been reusing for the past year and a half. but, it is incredibly time consuming. i scoured three grocery stores for peas in a pod, bought some at $4.99 a pound, steamed and shelled them, and ended up with a burned-out looking container of pea mush the size of one serving. the whole process took me about an hour, so they were the most expensive baby food on the planet. (i opted for frozen after that little incident, and rinsed the peas in an OCD-like fashion, hoping to remove all the sodium from their existence). and one time el Jefe' bought asparagus on sale, yummy asparagus about the size of pencils. i guess you're supposed to peel asparagus (with a carrot peeler) to remove something bad. i peeled asparagus for over an hour, and have learned you buy asparagus the size of tree trunks to make the process more efficient. maybe it doesn't taste as good, but a) it's asparagus and b) your punkin doesn't know the difference.

i ended up responsible for all of punkin's meals. hell, i breastfed him for nine months, and kept pumping until the full year, so i might as well jump in with both feet and become the sole provider. bonus: el Jefe' has had to cook the adult meals for the last twenty months. i spend a couple hours every weekend filling up little containers to go into the freezer. (now the foods are not mushed, but i still do it because i can't let go.) i worry if the empty containers are stacking up. time to buy a melon! that'll occupy a bunch of containers and all i have to do is cut it!

punkin is in daycare, so this has led to some interesting comments and questions.

do you make all his food the night before? No, i would go insane.

how does he like his green vegetables? uh, he loves avocado, which is technically a fruit, i know, but ...

what is the difference between yams and sweet potatoes? it is easier to write yams on the container.

why won't he eat mixed foods? would you eat mushed yams with green beans mixed in?

what do we do about the school menu, with you being vegetarian and all? we are not vegetarian. it just took me 9 months to realize Ruth Yaron is a vegetarian, and her book includes about two pages on cooking meats. eventually the punkin got them. i'm just a little slow.

punkin eats the school menu now, and has for several months, mainly because he wants to eat what everyone else is eating. (this was a big step because now we can eat dinner as a family before 9 pm). i still bring him organic milk, and a serving each of a fruit and a vegetable. he's supposed to get food from home with his snack so he has a "healthy and nutritious" choice between cookies and fruit.

check out this art project they did at day care this week:

i'm so proud.