I know I probably sound like a total broken record, but time flies by so quickly when you have a baby. I feel like it was just Christmastime, when we had a tiny 5-week-old who was just learning to smile. She’d nap off and on for half the day, and she was most content when snuggled in our arms.
Life has zoomed forward. We now have an almost-6-month-old who is learning to crawl, only naps at designated hours and would much rather wiggle around than be held. She talks in a continual stream of babbles, and she laughs at the drop of a hat. Beany has definitely become her own person in the past few, wildly fast months, and we think she’s pretty awesome.
So yes, that’s how babies are. They grow and change at the speed of light, and just when you think you know what they’re up to, they learn to do something else. But they don’t stay babies forever, and this reality is becoming clearer and clearer every time our feels-like-she-was-just-a-newborn baby scooches up on her knees and looks up with that gigantic smile. I’m ready for the next thing, Mommio. Let’s see if you can keep up.
Enter the next milestone: baby food. I was super excited about the prospect of making all of the Bean’s baby food myself. I did a bunch of research on different methods to try, different foods to start with and different cooking methods to follow. In the end, I decided on simple rice cereal. No frills. Just a classic.
I followed the recipe from The Baby & Toddler Cookbook (a mighty handy book if ask me), and we sat Beany down for her first taste on the road of culinary exploration. She opened her mouth wide and took a bite of her first real food. Then she looked at us like we were crazy. A bit of food stayed in, and the majority ended up on her face.
For the next week, the scenario looked pretty much the same. She’d eat a bit, spit out a lot and gave us that “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” look. I started worrying that the texture of the cereal was still too much for her to handle, and the lure of the box mix was getting stronger, so I decided to give it a try, just to see Beany’s reaction. I was able to find a brand of organic rice cereal with an ingredient list of nothing more than brown rice and iron that I felt OK about, so after a quick mix with hot water (those boxes do make it easy), I sat Beany down to give it a go. She took her first bite, let out an elated “Ahh” and proceeded to eat half the bowl. Excited as I was that she was taking to the eating thing so well, I could only reach one conclusion: As of now, my baby prefers boxed cereal to her mom’s home cooking. Ooph.
I’m convinced that it’s the texture thing that won Beany over in the end. I could only get the brown rice so powdery in the food processor (and thus only so smooth in the cereal), so I think once she gets a little bigger, I’ll try switching back to the homemade version. And I still plan to try doing the impending veggies myself (I’m guessing a sweet potato will be much more cooperative in the pureeing stage than that stubborn brown rice). Still, it’s all just an affirmation of a parenting lesson my mom has repeated often since the Bean was born: Figure out what works for you. Wiser words were never spoken.
••••••••••••••••••••
Rice Cereal
From The Baby & Toddler Cookbook (Karen Ansel and Charity Ferreira, p. 24)
• ¼ cup brown rice
Process the brown rice in a food processor or blender until it becomes a fine, uniform powder, about 4 minutes.
Bring 1 cup of water to a simmer in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the brown-rice powder, and reduce heat to low. Cook, whisking constantly, until the water is absorbed and the cereal is smooth, about 5 minutes.
Add enough water to thin the cereal to a consistency your baby can handle. Let cool before serving.
Refrigerate in an airtight container for up to three days, or spoon individual servings into ice cube trays and freeze, covered, for up to three months. You can also grind extra powder and store that in an airtight container in the refrigerator until needed.
Makes about 1 cup of cereal
••••••••••••••••••••
Have any of you gone the homemade baby food route? What were the hits? What were the misses? And what was your biggest mess?!? I’d love to hear about it!
XO,
Katrina
Firsts abound with a little one in the house…your Mom is a smart lady.
I’m well-past the babyfood stage (the granddaughter living in our house is 21/2) but I’ll share what my daughter has done with her 15-month-old:
The minute he was past the basic single-ingredient foods, she began simply pureeing whatever she was making for the Big People. It’s worked beautifully for her.
I wish I had thought of that 25 years ago!
Enjoy your sweet Bean…
I think making a baby-friendly version of whatever the big people eat is smart thinking for sure! And we’ll be there before I know it!
I just had an entire conversation about baby food with a friend of mine this weekend. Funny, we used to talk about boys over a glass of wine, now we talk about her 8-month-old boy over many bottles of milk =)
While her little mister certainly had a personality before, with baby food it’s showing in new ways – I do like sweet potatoes, I do not like peas, etc. Plus it’s hilarious to watch him eat, with half the mush ending up on his face and watching him try to figure out how his tongue works. Many photo opportunities await!
Ha! That cracks me up. Yep, the conversations really do start to shift, huh?
And you’re right about the photo opps! Babies make the funniest faces when it comes to food. You can just see their little brains at work!
When I started making baby food, Natalie preffered the store bought kind because of the texture. She eventually learned to like mine and then pretty quickly decided she would only eat finger food 🙂 such a fun time for you!
Glad I’m not the only one whose baby preferred the store-bought kind in the beginning. 🙂 I’m excited for the day when we can start giving her those classic little-kid foods like Cheerios. Doesn’t that just seem like the snack that epitomizes babyhood?
Just think, you’ll be back in the baby-food-making routine again before you know it! So excited for you guys!
I did mostly homemade baby food for James. It really was quite easy to make a lot of things. I used ice cube trays to freeze the food and then I could just pull out a few cubes as needed. I think one cube was 2 servings in the beginning. We did sweet potatoes, butternut squash, peaches, pears, etc. The one thing I couldn’t seem to get the right consistency of was green beans. Good luck!
The ice cubes trays seem like a great trick. We’ll get started on new stuff pretty soon, so here’s hoping I’m as successful as you’ve been! 🙂
Making your own baby food is so easy and affordable, I’m surprised more people don’t do it. For a lot of fruits and veggies, you can just head down the frozen-food aisle of your favorite store, cook them in your microwave, and pop in a blender with some water until you get the desired consistency. Some things get pureed instantly (like steamed pears) and others take a few minutes (like green beans). I use ice cube trays to freeze 1 tablespoon at a time. Then you can take out as much as your baby needs and mix and match flavors. The colors are beautiful! Baby food in jars looks so… blah. And tastes so blah. But food that you blend up yourself actually tastes like food.
One tip: when mashing bananas, microwave them a bit and you’ll be able to get them smoother. And don’t be afraid to blend up meat! It tastes a few minutes, and a lot of water, but in the end it tastes like (watery) meat… and doesn’t look and smell like the glue you find in baby food jars!
A steamer is handy for cooking fresh fruits and veggies. I have a Beaba Babycook that I use almost every day. It is a steamer and blender all-in-one. Expensive, but I talked some family into going together to give it to us as a gift. Having your own steamer (whether electric or stove-top) is great because you can cook up whatever you can imagine for your baby… cantaloupe, broccoli, spinach… I can’t think of others at this late hour, but I know we’ve made some unconventional things. My babies ate such a variety of foods because I cooked it myself, and it really helps to prepare their taste buds for a variety of things when they are older.
A steamer is also handy when your baby is ready for finger foods. Babies love little chunks of apple or sweet potato to munch on. My youngest (9 months) is past the baby food stage, but we still use our steamer most days so he has his healthy veggies to eat (or mash into his hair, whatever he feels like).
Enjoy cooking for your little one!
So many awesome tips! Thanks for the great advice!