Looking for recipes for preserving summer harvests, for baby food, and for the family in general has gotten me looking at many different food blogs (thank you Tracy), baby food websites, and cooking web pages in general. I'm rather amazed by the advice in regards to baby food. Almost all of the suggestions are for bland, boring food. I realize that with a baby you want to introduce one food at a time to eliminate allergic reactions, or at least to be able to know what caused the reaction, but my goodness. I'm liking one of the blog approaches to baby food. Keep it simple, but yummy.
I just got done looking at a baby food site and was not all that impressed. Lots of processed foods. I realize they are advertising, but wow. Bear hasn't eaten that kind of food for at least 6 months (probably closer to a year). He just stopped eating baby food at about 8 -9 months of age. Just wouldn't eat it anymore. He was eye-balling our plates, so we chopped up some of our dinner and viola' he ate again.
I know that our society has gone the route of microwaves and convience all processed and packaged into a 30 second prep time. I just hadn't realized how far this went. "They" are quoting studies of toddlers not eating any vegetables on given days. How do you not at least give a kid a glass of 100% juice? I know that a lot of folks say that the fresh produce is more expensive and unrealistic to purchase for folks living in poverty. What a load of crap! I grew up in "poverty" and ate fruits and veggies. You just have to be careful about how you purchase.
It doesn't seem to matter what monetary level you are on these days though. You are either a "hippie/crunchy" person that goes organic, green, sustainable, and all the other key words or you are "normal" and eat processed, packaged, fast food. I know this can't be entirely true. There have got to be some people out there that are trying to be in the middle somewhere. We try, but I find myself leaning more and more toward the crunchy side of things. Although it does get expensive if you are shopping at the natural stores, and you can't seem to find much without preservatives/chemicals in a normal grocery store. Especially when you get to small town America.
Now that I've ranted for awhile...
Basic ideas for kid's food we've come up with:
Any food from the garden is fair game
What we are eating: with the rule of try it you might like it, but it isn't a big deal if you don't
So long as he tastes everything on his plate he doesn't have to eat it. He decides when he is done after tasting everything. So far this works well.
More milk, juice, water, and fish than Tom and I eat (we don't eat much fish being this far inland, but Bear loves fish)
Let his tastes be the deciding factor, he likes peas but not carrots, so he gets peas
Other than that we all try to eat homemade with more fruits and veggies than meat. More chicken than beef. And we try to expand our palates with something new once in awhile. Besides it is more fun to cook new things.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
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