gerber-licious

Ok, confession. I've been reading the book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" ... for like two years. I'm terrible at finishing books. I bought this one at an airport somewhere, read a few chapters and then lost it for a while, and I just kept forgetting to take it on subsequent car trips. And, seriously, I love my Time magazine and a billion internet articles and blogs, but I'm just not much of a bookie these days.

But I digress. So, in this book, this family decides to eat as locally as possible for a year. Every time I read some of it, I get all jazzed about the prospect, even though I know I'll never really do it or stick with it for long. But I did parlay my momentary enthusiasm into a baby-food-making extravaganza today. It's something I've been meaning to try - it just seems like it would be so easy. And WAY more economical. I mean, Ainsley's already eating almost a whole thing of baby food in the morning and at night, and if you figure at least a dollar a container, seven days a week, it starts to add up. But more than that, I just get kind of grossed out when I think of any mass food production - big 'ol vats of pesticidey food in big factories with rats and their poop and someone's finger getting cut off and falling in, gaahh (I guess I've never fully recovered from The Jungle??). I mean, I'll eat all that crap, but we want better for our kids, right?

So. Baby food making. It was a lot of work, but the results weren't entirely disappointing. I found local squash, apples and carrots at one of the greenhouses in town, and then it was just a whole lot of chopping and boiling and food processing and straining. Mike was gone all afternoon, so it was intermixed with baby wrangling (who, BY THE WAY, is now the rolling-over EXPERT of the civilized world! I witnessed it officially for the first time last night, but the frequency and ease with which she has been executing both tummy to back and the more advanced back to tummy moves today makes me believe the daycare ladies were keeping this a secret for a while).

I steamed the vegetables and stewed the fruit, adding some big-box nectarines and avocadoes to the mix. After a batch was cooked and strained, I used ice cube trays to freeze individual tablespoons of baby food, so that should be handy. The final verdict (with my little taste-tester's help):

Applesauce: awesome. Just like real applesauce. The food processor pureed it really finely and Ainsley gobbled it up.

Carrots: eh. Final product was still kind of chunky ... or grainy rather. I mean, it went through the strainer but it's just hard to get that "first foods" almost liquid texture of baby food. Ainsley ate it for supper, but I think she thought blowing the little chunks out was really fun because carrots were everywhere at the end.

She didn't try these, but as far as cooking:

Squash: Fine, kind of watery. I'm pretty sure I was supposed to get acorn squash instead of summer squash, but I figured it wouldn't hurt anything. It pureed as well as the apples and tastes like, well, squash.

Nectarines: This looked and smelled really good. Must be all the pesticides and genetic engineering. Hehe.

Avocado: Hmm. I didn't cook this one or anything, just pureed and froze it. But it kind of turned brown, like guacamole does if you don't add lime or lemon juice. Next time maybe I'll try that, if Ainsley's had citrus by then.

I'm glad I tried this. It was kind of a rainy day, so it was fun to just chill with the baby and pretend to be a hippie earth mama, because I don't feel like I have the time to be, normally. It was an awful lot of work for three ice cube trays of baby food (what would that be? Like a dozen cubes each? So 6 meals per tray probably, three trays, nine days of baby food). I think next time it will go faster, though, and I could do more of the things she ends up liking. Definitely the applesauce.