About a month ago Squishy started watching us eat, her eyes glued to the end of the fork as it went down to the plate for a piece of food, up and into our mouths, and back down to the plate again. We didn’t think about it much until she started grabbing, at which point we realized that she’d gotten old enough to eat real food.
So we went to the store and got the groovy organic rice cereal. Mixed with a little milk, it tasted just like paste. Squishy gummed it around and spit it out. Good girl.
Next we tried the little cans of baby fruits and vegetables. Once she figured out how to swallow the stuff she began hoovering down the purées of apples, which taste more or less like grownups’ canned apple sauce. She’s into the squash, too, but rejects the peas and just barely tolerates the carrots. No wonder—they’re wildly overcooked. The problem, of course, is that those tiny jars have to be heated long enough to sterilize the food so it doesn’t require refrigeration. All very practical but not very good to eat, and the last thing I want is for my daughter to develop a distaste for vegetables. So I decided to make my own baby food.
The basic idea is to take simple foods—apples, pears, winter squash, sweet potatoes, frozen peas—cook them simply (with no salt or added fat) until they’re soft but still flavorful, then purée them so they can be swallowed without chewing (since Squishy only has two tiny front teeth so far). I’ve used a blender but I prefer a food mill with the finest disk, which conveniently removes any leftover skins or seeds. So far pears are her favorite but they’re a little gritty straight from the food mill, so I play Thomas Keller and run them through a tamis. I make a couple pounds at a time and freeze six-ounce portions, which used to last two meals but now last only one.
At dinner last night Squishy ate four ounces of pears and four of corn, which is like me eating six pounds of food at a single sitting. Awesome. Now if I can just figure out how to make a bacon purée…
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