Making Baby Food

I make Iain's food. It's easy.

No, really. Many things I read and heard about pregnancy, birth and childcare have turned out to be about 20% right for me. But making baby food? That's easy.

For instance, today I made 3 kinds of baby food in about an hour. I peeled and cut up a few sweet potatoes, put them in a pyrex dish and popped them into a 375 degree oven. Then I tossed some carrots into a pyrex dish with some chicken stock and put that in the oven. Then I cut an acorn squash in half, scooped out the guts, and stuck it in the oven.


An hour later, I had a stovetop covered in roasted rooty goodness, and my house smelled like Thanksgiving, except better.


To make these soft, buttery veggies into baby food, I threw them into my Cuisinart Mini-Prep (40 bucks) added milk (breastmilk or formula) and some spice (cinnamon, nutmeg, whatever) and pressed Freakout. Zip, zip: puree.

I think that roasted veggies taste especially good, but you can boil them, too. The other night I heated up some frozen spinach, then added milk and cottage cheese. Zip, zip: spinach puree. As Iain has gotten older, I've added a little bit of yoghurt, a little bit of parmesan (freshly grated on my handy-dandy microplane grater, thankyouverymuch. I'm a grating snob. That, I admit), some mint.

.

There's nothing to it. I've made spinach, green beans, peas, avocado (ok, that one you don't really "make" - you just mash it and you're done), peaches, carrots, sweet potato, acorn squash, butternut squash, pears, applesauce...that might be it so far.

.

You can freeze it in your ice cube tray, then store the cubes in a plastic bag. Whenever you want a little baby food, just grab a cube, heat it up and you're done. Going out? Put it into a storage container and let it thaw while you hang out, then heat it. Or heat it, go and eat it at room temp. Whatever.

.

I'm not a Mom Fanatic. I don't stress about diapers, or bathtime, or schedules, or perfect clothing or perfect napping...but it's nice to know that I can feed Iain without too much trouble.

.

Of course, once the food is on the spoon - that's another story. This week's fun trick is reaching out and grabbing the spoon, spilling the food into his crotch, then opening his mouth like, "Ok, I'd like that bite now." Dude: it's on your pants.