Monday, July 11, 2011

Iron chef baby edition

Chopping up sweet potato

This week's secret ingredient is...sweet potato!

Into the steamer

We're starting to try solid foods, although "solid" is a loose term. Maureen has some awesome notes on making your own baby food over at The Vegetarian Salmon.

Food grinder

Milling the potato

About the Green Sprouts food mill. It's BPA and phthalate free and made with recycled materials. April gave me this as a shower gift. When I checked out the reviews online, there was lots of bellyaching about food juice leaking out of the bottom and mashed food "explosions." But I had a good experience with it so far grinding up sweet potato, squash, and apples. It functions as well as a potato ricer would, so don't expect it to chop up meats or really tough stuff. Perhaps I was not disappointed because I never expected squashing up food to be a tidy task. I put a plate under the mill before I used it, same as I would with the cheese grater. (If mashing up your own baby food is really that miserable, inconvenient, messy, and...er, explosive, use a food processor.)

Potato in the ice tray

Sweet potato cubes

April also gave me a Green Sprouts grinder bowl for when we're on the go. I haven't tried it yet because we don't go anywhere. Heh. And Tmomma gave me her old Fresh Baby freezer trays. So we are in the baby food business.

Mixing potato with milk

First time trying sweet potato

I was hoping for a cringe or a scowl at the first taste of sweet potato, but this crazy child just kept on smiling and smiling. As usual. She opened her mouth like a baby bird when she saw the spoon coming her way again.

Wiping her mouth

She even wiped her mouth with her bib. Now we are waiting for the orange poop.

4 comments:

Tmomma said...

yay for homemade baby food and yay for a good eater! bug ate sweet potato and apple, yeah, he's a great eater even today...note the sarcasm...roo was and still is an awesome eater! have fun with the yummy messes!

Barb Mowery said...

Messes, yep. The baby food experiments are happening at the same time Maureen's really excited about blowing raspberries, so feeding her requires a raincoat. :)

Rebecca said...

Love it!

thepescetariansalmon said...

YAY! I am so glad you had a great experiment in making your food. I promise you that you will really enjoy it. More importantly, SHE will really enjoy it. Real food is so much tastier than the jarred stuff. It awakens their culinary palette :)