smitten kitchen baby

A couple months before the baby turned one, I freaked out: Wait, I’m expected to keep a small child alive on human food? I am unprepared! How is this done? Why don’t they cover this in parenting classes? Because, realistically, that first year is easy food-wise: just gimme the milk and nobody gets hurt. But the doctor warned that by the end of the first year, milk alone is not enough to meet their nutritional needs and from that point on, boy, are you in the spotlight. “Oh, you feed your baby [insert food that most children want to eat exclusively -- chicken fingers, goldfish crackers, macaroni and cheese -- here]?” the neighborhood Mompetitor sniffs as you bust out all you could bribe your kid to eat that day at the park?

And so begins the next “phase” of this sporadically updated site: the one in which I try to feed a tiny human real food, with sustenance. After tossing and turning one night trying to figure out some sort of Food Management System that didn’t involve me buying a set number of freezer packages and jars each week, I had my eureka moment one night, and I declared it: SOUP! Soup will be the answer. Seasonal, delicious, chock-fulla-good-stuff soup! You can make soup out of just about anything, and by golly, I would. Pureed until he handled textures like a pro; chunky and stewy soon after that. Make a big batch over the weekend and you’re set for the week.

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I’m pretty sure it happened overnight. One day, the baby was happily slurping down every and anything I could run through a blender and the next day, all he wanted was That. What You’re Eating. Give It To Me Or I Will Make Terrible Yelping Noises Until You Figure Out That Babies Need Lattes Too.

[I'm sorry baby, but the last thing you we the neighbors need is something to keep you up at night.]

And we haven’t eaten them same since. From that day on, I literally could not walk into the room eating an apple unless I also carried a dish of apple chunks for the baby to… what? I mean, he had like two teeth at that point and not very effective ones at that, but he wanted that food in his mouth and once he got it in his mouth, even if he hadn’t figured out how to “process” it, good luck getting it back. Suddenly, those teeth were daggers. Occasionally, two hours later we’d find the half-eaten chunk of apple deep in his shag play rug. Babies, man. Good thing they are cute.

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Friends, I didn’t mean to abandon you. But since I suspect you are here because you also have a little rugrat underfoot, I probably don’t need to tell you that the only thing — seriously, only — thing I have done since we last spoke nearly two months is blink. Maybe twice. The baby, however, started crawling, then pulling himself up, then cruising, then climbing, then he started chewing on carpets and shoes and taking rooms apart and then he stopped sleeping because why would you sleep if you could be awake at 4 a.m. (for the day) and practicing your standing? And yelling? Oof. Like I said, I only just blinked.

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We’ve covered applesauce, we’ve covered pears, carrots, peaches and even spinach which means I’m overdue to get to an early fruit sauce, one so good I might be burying the lede to have made you wait this long.

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I was really eager to get into greens because, lordy, I love (well, most) greens when they’re done right — creamed spinach, heck even creamed chard, gratins and pasta dishes. Basically, “done right” in my book equals “coated with sauce and/or cheese but probably both”, which is exactly why I was pretty stumped as to how I was going to make spinach — straight pureed spinach, I mean doesn’t that sound terrible? — appealing, and not a drab, pesto-ish mush. Wow, I’m really whipping out all of the sexy food words today, aren’t I?

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Confession: I’m having a confidence crisis with this site. All of the warning signs were there from the beginning: my disbelief that anyone would appreciate my guidance in the “cook, then purée” approach to food and my disinterest in engaging the kind of “you’re doing it wrong!” commentary that accompanies any parenting discussions on the internet. (However, as a testament to your awesomeness, only a few peeps of it have shown up here but even those disproportionally exasperate me.) (P.S. I think you’re doing a great job.)

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I had my doubts about carrots. It doesn’t matter that I like all formats of carrot, gleefully pickling them, shredding them, roasting them and even puréeing them into salad dressing, I failed to see how carrot mush could be appetizing for a 7-month old. Perhaps I underestimated his taste buds. Then again, this is a 7-month old who likes to lick (lick! aah! way to send an otherwise calm mama into a Purell-dousing frenzy) the chain on the swings at New York City public parks, perhaps I actually overestimated them.

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There’s an old-school rule in blogging: Don’t begin a post with an apology. Nobody cares! They’re just happy you’re there! But guys, I’m sorry, because this post is photo-bereft. I made pears while I was still firmly of the mind that nobody would ever need my boring “cook, then puree” baby food recipes and only snapped a couple shots. I’ll turn in my food blogging credentials now.

Although pears were only the second “dish” I made for the baby, I was already getting impatient to move onto more exciting things. I had been trying to adhere to the “only introduce one new food at a time” rule, which meant that with only apples under his belt (also, his chin, neck rolls and toes, somehow, and do not even try to wipe his face, okay?) I couldn’t jump into the pear-parsnips, pear-peaches and pear-prunes I was chomping at the bit to whiz up. Sure, I could add cinnamon to plain pears, but I really don’t want the baby to think that all cooked fruit tastes like cinnamon, especially when the hope is to introduce new flavors. So I decided to hedge things a little — yes, this is what counts as “walking on the wild side” in these post-salad days — and added a little vanilla bean and a glug of an aged, sweet balsamic vinegar.

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And so we started with applesauce. Well, technically my baby’s first “foods” were some impossible-to-resist crinkly paper from the examination table at his pediatrician’s (or whatever I missed in Mama’s First Tiny Mouf Fingersweep) and some diluted, organic, no sugar added prune juice, but we don’t really need to get into the rationale behind that, do we?

Despite having baked more apple pies, tarts, crumbles, grunts, brown bettys, muffins and cakes in the last five years than most people do in their lifetimes, I’d actually never made applesauce before. Needless to say, mastery of applesauce is a great trick to have up your sleeve when you a) have a wee one underfoot and b) live in an area where apples are pretty much the only locally-grown fruit available from October through April. I knew Elise would never steer me wrong, thus I turned to her recipe for guidance, nixing the sugar and lemon juice, as I understand we’re supposed to ease into the citruses further down the road.

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