Saturday, February 7, 2009

Laura's in the Kitchen!

I am becoming quite the little cook, I must say.

In the past few weeks, I have learned how to skin tomatoes by plunging them into boiling water. I have learned how to make a lovely cheese sauce. I have learned how to cook fish, which I have never done in my life. I learned how to make mashed potatoes (up until now I got them out of a package). I've even learned how to make a rich and fragrant pot of stock from scratch.

And it's all because of The Baby's Table!

Yes, that's right, my darling daughter Gwen is the recipient of all this marvellous food. Just yesterday I made her "Florets in Cheese Sauce" which is made from the cheese sauce I mentioned above, plus 4 cups of broccoli and/or cauliflower florets. It was incredibly easy to make, and oh my, it smelled heavenly! The only thing differentiating this meal from Grown-Up Food was the fact that the sauce contained formula instead of milk. Oh, and the part where I put it in the food processor to puree it. But other than that? Oh my goodness! My daughter eats real food!

I am so enjoying doing this for her. Probably because I can make a recipe (or two or three) while she's napping, freeze it in ice cube trays, and then have meals on hand for the next two weeks or so. There are few things I enjoy more than avoiding the 5pm debate about what's for dinner! But even aside from the convenience, I am just really enjoying the process of it: choosing what I'm going to make, learning the new procedures, organizing the cubes into baggies so that every baggie holds about three days' worth of a variety of meals. Man, I am such a geek.

I know that making one's own baby food is one of those Meccas of Excellent Motherhood. It's one of the ones that most people intend to do, at some point, but they just find it too difficult, or time-consuming, or whatever. And maybe once I get back to work the novelty will wear off. But honestly, I'm loving it right now. I'm excited to try out more recipes and sock away tons more food in the freezer so Gwen will have wonderful, tasty, healthy lunches while she's at daycare. I love the fact that her food has no additives or preservatives, and honestly I'm finding it way easier than I expected to prepare a lot of natural, healthy foods.

If I could figure out a way to make money at this, I would!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hah! I totally recommend that book to all parents of toddlers! And, all of the recipes are delicious (I'd eat them all up). I'm so happy for you!

J

Anonymous said...

Really, you didn't know how to make mashed potatoes?!

Really.....?

Surprised Suburban Wife said...

Another great source for baby food recipes is a website called wholesomebabyfood.com

Isn't it empowering to find out how simple it is to make things like yams and quinoa (which I didn't really cook with much before, or at all really) into baby food?!!

Amberism said...

I don't puree anymore, and am now feeling a wave of serious parenting guilt, am I supposed to be? I have no idea when I stopped with Callum - the things we forget! - and never bothered to recheck the information this time around, so Claire gets the brocolli, and the cheese sauce* the same way I eat it...

Which is sad, in a way, because I totally get the joy in organizing the perfect frozen cubes of baby food into baggies :).


*made with milk, because I am way too lazy to make a separate sauce and no one has been able to explain to me, convincingly, that it makes a difference.

and I'm with rheadeja - seriously? out of a box?

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