Baby food!

Baby started eating pureed food & rice cereal a few weeks ago and he is a HUGE fan of food, so far he has loved everything he has tried. I really wanted to make some of his food, partly for cost (I can make food from organic produce for way cheaper per oz than buying organic baby food at the store) and partly because I like cooking and I wanted to cook for my baby. I ended up buying organic sweet potatoes, apples, pears, acorn squash and avocados with plans to batch cook them and freeze in ice cube trays. It all worked out really well, except for the avocados that turned brown before I got to them. The sweet potatoes and apples were well worth it, cost wise, the pears less so (they were $7 a lb-I need to watch for cheaper pears!) and I forgot to do the math on the squash. So far he has tried everything except the pears, but I expect he will like them as much as he has liked everything else. It has been great to just run down to the garage and grab a couple of cubes of food to make his dinner.

I am not totally opposed to the commercial foods, we got several of the Gerber organic brand cartons of food, partly to make it easier to send food with him to school and also to have some easy room temp food for a backup on lazy nights.

One of my main goals though in cooking for him was to find things we could make for him that were part of our regular dinner plans for ourselves, I wanted to incorporate fixing his meals into fixing our meals, both because I liked the idea of a family meal and it seemed like the easier it is the more likely it is that we will actually make his food. I looked for a cookbook that would let me do this, and both this one and this one came close, but neither were exactly what I was looking for. I wanted something that would let two people who work full time and try to shop within a budget find ideas for easy & healthy family meals made with ingredients that you can buy mostly at Kroger, Publix & Wal-mart (with only occasional trips to a specialty store like Whole Foods). So since I didn't find the cookbook I wanted, I am going to try to write down what works and share my ideas on this blog both to help myself remember and for anyone that happens to be reading it!

This morning was the first time I realized my ideal of a one pot meal that all 3 of us can eat, so I definitely want to share this idea! We all three ate toasted millet cereal, which goes against my "manifesto" above since I bought the millet in bulk from a whole grain supplier and not the grocery store, but I think I have seen it at a regular grocery store too and it was super easy to make.

Millet Cereal
Advance prep: I toasted about 1/2 cup of millet the night before, I just put it in a little pan and stuck it in the toaster oven for two cycles and then put it in a food container to store it.

To make the cereal grind the millet to a fine powder (I used a spare coffee grinder we use just for grinding spices & grains), & put in a pot with about 2 cups of water (I think a 1:4 ratio works to make a good consistency for a beginning eater). Bring the water to a boil, turn down the heat, cover and simmer for about 10 min. For the baby's portion I spooned about 1/4 of a cup of cereal into his bowl and stirred in a frozen cube of applesauce, both to flavor it and cool it down enough for him to eat. My husband and I ate it with milk, honey & cinnamon. This breakfast was a winner on several counts, it was: 1) nutritious, 2) yummy, 3) something the whole family can eat and 4) and cheap!

Encouragement

Sometimes I feel like I am in a little bit of a rut, or a funk. Our evenings are never long enough to get everything done, there are piles of laundry to be washed, the sink is usually full of dishes waiting on the dishes in the dishwasher to finish, I have to remember to wash all my pump parts and figure out about his bottles for the next day and on and on. While the baby is still up, playing with him and working on dinner are usually our priorities, and then the other stuff gets done (or not) after he goes to bed. The side effect of all this is that I feel like I have little or no time to be myself, I like to cook, to mess around with sewing, to read, to work in the yard, but I almost never have time (or energy) for any of my normal creative outlets. I feel this tension between what is urgent and what is important. Actually, nursing is good for keeping my priorities straight, it forces me to stop in the midst of the mess and sit on the couch with my baby and just focus on taking care of him for 20 min or so, his hungry tummy doesn't care that there might be laundry that needs folding, or floors that need sweeping.

In the midst of all this, it is encouraging to read blogs like this http://wendolonia.com/blog/category/bentos/ and see another working mom trying to make thoughtful choices for her son's lunches. These lunches are so pretty and are such a cool way to be creative, while taking care of the practical need to send a lunch to preschool for her son. I want to try to make thoughtful decisions like this in my life, and to find ways like this to express my personality and be myself in my new life without looking back or regretting my old life because I would never, ever want to go back to my life pre-baby.