First Foods: A Primer

Believe it or not, but from the moment you put a spoon into your baby's mouth for the first time, you're not only introducing solids, but you're also introducing expectations that may shape the way your child views food for the rest of his life.  He watches you to learn what food is all about:  Whether you are opening a package of prepared baby food from the grocery store shelf, or are preparing it lovingly by hand from fresh produce; whether you rush him through his meals or allow him to explore each bite's flavor and texture; whether you demand he eat as much as possible or let his appetite lead the way; whether you focus primarily on sweet foods first or on a variety of flavors from strong and bitter to mellow and savory; whether you eat disconnected from one another in front of the television or together at the table as a family.  Your baby might be an adorable, pudgy little package of rolls, drools and smiles, but he's also a little sponge soaking up everything - the good, and the bad - that you put before him.

This milestone is such an exciting and important one for your child.  Up until this point, his experience with his sense of taste has been limited to breastmilk or formula, his own hands and feet, and toys of various flavorless materials.  A brand new world is opening its gate before him, so guide him right.

Timing Is Everything.

When your baby is ready for solids is subjective.  Generally, your baby should be ready between four to six months, when the iron he's been storing since he lived in your womb is depleting and his digestive system is strengthening.  Typically, he should be able to hold his head up and steady, and sit comfortably with the assistance of a chair.  He may also show interest in your food and watching you eat, and may even try to grab food off your plate if you've left it within reach.

Introducing solid foods before this time frame can cause digestive problems as well as put your child at a higher risk for allergies and obesity.  Conversely, waiting too long to introduce foods can make your child too comfortable with his liquid diet and he may be more likely to refuse this unfamiliar texture and flavor.  However, your doctor may suggest waiting a bit longer if you have a family history of food allergies.  Always consult your pediatrician with any concerns you may have before starting your child on solids.

To maximize your likelihood of success, introduce solids for the first time when your baby is neither hungry nor full.  If your baby is hungry, he may not tolerate your attempts and want his familiar meal; if he is full, he may not open his mouth for the spoon at all.  Remember no matter what that this is an unfamiliar experience, so don't stress and just have fun with it - feeding solids right now is much less about nutrition than it is about practice.

Once a food has been introduced, it should be given exclusively (or coupled with foods that have already passed this "test") for at least two days so that if your child has a reaction, you have a better chance of pinpointing which food is the culprit.  If you have a family history of food allergies, you may want to stretch the introductory period further.

Most important when it comes to timing:  Slow and steady.  If your baby is too fussy and is outright rejecting your attempts that day, it is not a big deal.  There is always tomorrow.  Don't force your child to eat by continuing to spoon food into his crying maw, and don't act disappointed that he won't eat.  Simply say something encouraging, give him a big kiss on the cheek and clean up.

What's On the Menu?

Infant rice cereal is often suggested as a perfect first food.  It's cheap, it's essentially flavorless, it's easy to prepare and it poses almost no risk of an allergic reaction.  However, it can also back up delicate digestive systems and, well, it's boring.  I think it's great to use for a few days just to transition your baby from one texture to another, but after a few days, you can move on to better things, like vegetables.

It is said that babies naturally prefer sweet things.  I can't say for sure, as I don't remember being a baby and my personal preferences to this day are for the salty and savory.  To be on the safe side, though, I personally prefer starting my kids with a variety of vegetables.  It seems to me that going from a banana to a pea would be a much more disappointing experience than going from a pea to a banana.

Try to avoid the baby food aisle, at least for now.  Commercially-prepared baby foods may seem nice as they are convenient and contain simple ingredients.  Was the produce free of bruises, pits or marks?  Was it fresh?  Are they pureeing the seeds, skins and other less-appetizing parts of the vegetables?  How did they prepare it?  How many nutrients were lost in the process of turning an apple into a product that sits in a plastic tub or glass jar and lasts literally for years?  What about meat!?  What parts of the animal are in there, exactly?

Walk through the produce aisle.  Feel your vegetables, smell them.  See if they were organically or locally produced.  Seed it yourself, peel it yourself, prepare it yourself, and feed it fresh or freeze it for the future - a future a month from now instead of a year.  Buy yourself a bundle of fresh asparagus and prepare it yourself, and then compare it to asparagus from a can - you wouldn't want to eat the latter, but that's the equivalent of what you're feeding your baby when you give them commercially-prepared foods:  Over-cooked, awkwardly-flavored and generally unappetizing produce with no nutrition left from who knows where and when.

In the blogs to follow that are labelled "First Foods," I will walk you through my son August's journey into solids so that you can get ideas on food selection, preparation, and other helpful hints as you and your child journey through solids on your own path.  I would suggest that you also keep a small journal documenting which foods your child has eaten and whether or not he has had any reaction to them.  If you wish, you can also mark down his particular reaction.  For example, my daughter's first solid beyond rice cereal was peas, and her reaction was one of horror, to say the least.  But her next food, summer squash, was greeted with delight!

What food you start with is up to you.  In Africa, babies tend to be introduced to meat before anything else.  In America, it is cereal.  In India, they don't think twice about spicing it up for little taste buds.  There are no real rules, but some guidelines I personally follow for infants are:

• No added fats, spices, sweeteners or salt when preparing baby food.  This gives your child an opportunity to taste and learn to appreciate the flavor of fresh, simple foods.
• Prepare your baby's meals at home, preferably with techniques that discourage nutrient loss.  Use any water that may have been used in cooking to thin out a puree that is too thick.  
• For the first few months, peel fruits and vegetables, and remove seeds if they are present.
• Avoid the more highly allergenic foods until a little later, between 10 and 12 months. 

Above all else... HAVE FUN.

Don't fret!  Make meal times enjoyable, stop when baby lets you know he's done, don't act like any food you offer is disgusting, and enjoy these little mealtimes before your baby turns into a toddler and demands a slice of bread and crackers for dinner instead of that wonderful chicken you've been roasting...

Multiple Motherhood and Quick Eats

If anyone had told me three years ago that by Easter 2012, I'd give birth to my second child in 13 months, I'd have spit my whiskey across the bathroom laughing.  "Doubtful," I'd say from my hot bath, clinking my glass against the ceramic tub.  Then I'd bury my smokey eyes back into my beat-up copy of The Satanic Bible and, with black-lacquered nails slowly turning each page, continue to ignore such a preposterous idea.

Yet here I am, spitting apple juice across the living room laughing at the person I used to be.  "I was such a moron," I'd say from the couch, kissing the hair of the sleeping toddler pressed against me while balancing the weight of a twitchy infant on my other shoulder.  Then I'd turn my sleepy eyes to "The History of the Papacy" sprawled across my lap and, with one free hand, attempt to turn the page without shaking anyone awake.

I was selfish, thoughtless, vain and egotistical, quite the far cry from the person I've become - the one who forgets to eat while she cooks delicious healthy meals for her daughter, the one who sacrifices taking showers on a regular basis so she can be readily available should her kids need her, the one who gets up by 8:00 a.m. every morning instead of finally getting to bed at 8:00 a.m.  A lot has changed, spiritually, physically, emotionally, and all for the best.

Yes, on Easter 2012 I became a mother of two.  Each of the 24 hours in a day are stretched even more thin as new responsibilities have been tossed into my already-full hands.  I don't mind; this is my life now, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Okay, I wouldn't mind being able to nap during the day like I did when I only had one kid, but that's the only thing I'd change.  Oh, and I'd get to take that daily shower I so desperately miss.  But that's it.  

As you can imagine, this has left me with very little time to cook, nonetheless blog.  All my free moments are spent catching up on social networking sites where I hope to have that one adult conversation I'd get of the day - discussing politics instead of bugs, for instance, or debating religion instead of trying to talk a toddler into not chewing on the couch.

My son, August, has his crabby moments where he must be held or we all suffer the consequence of his very healthy cry.  Being the kind of person who appreciates a little silence when she can get it, preparing an extensive meal like I used to for Evelyn is not in the realm of possibility anymore as it would require putting Gus down for longer a time than he can handle.  (Also, having my children "cry it out" is absolutely not an option as far as I'm concerned.)  I've had to start getting creative, and it helps that Evelyn can handle a lot more as far as texture goes.

When I need to prepare a meal quickly, this is the sort of list that goes through my head.  It's the short list of what I can prepare quickly that my daughter will enjoy.  Because we've apparently done so well getting Evie hooked on real food, she is extremely picky when it comes to the overcooked, flavorless prepackaged junk marketed to toddlers.  This is a blessing for obvious reasons, but a curse as well since it makes those crabby days hard - I can't simply pop something in the microwave, shovel it in her mouth and move on.  Not that I want to do something so horrid anyway.  Really, who does?

So, here are some ideas for moms with extremely limited time:

Omelets.  Eggs are so great.  Not only are they nutritious and cheap, but they cook up pretty quick, too.  When it seems I don't have time to cook anything for Evelyn, I always have time to cook eggs.  While I could easily just scramble them, I prefer to make omelets because they offer more as far as texture goes.  If you time everything right, making a spinach and cheese omelet can take as little as five minutes.

Prepare More.  Don't ever prepare "just enough."  Prepare enough for a few days.  When you have time to cook brown rice, noodles, bake a chicken, boil eggs, etc., make enough so you'll have it in the fridge for the next few days for when you don't have time.  Buying a rotisserie chicken from your local grocery store is a great way to have chicken on hand without ever having to actually cook it yourself.

Soup.  When in doubt, make soup.  Keep your pantry full of various noodles and frozen homemade chicken stock or cans of chicken stock (keep an eye on the ingredients and avoid any with preservatives or additives like monosodium glutamate) and your freezer full of vegetables.  Boil the stock, throw in some prepared chicken, various veggies and noodles and let it cook.  In the seven minutes it might take to cook noodles, you can have a flavorful chicken and vegetable soup without watching over it all day.  For some extra nutrition, and to cool it off to an edible temp, stir some milk in before serving.  

Soup is so versatile.  Today, I made Evelyn a chicken, vegetable and noodle soup.  To chicken stock, I added a handful of small bow tie pasta, a mix of frozen vegetables - zucchini, yellow squash, carrots, green beans and lima beans, some kale I diced into small pieces, some cooked chicken cut from a rotisserie chicken I had in the fridge from yesterday, and a little salt, pepper and garlic powder.  Before serving it, I splashed in some whole milk.  Evie loved it so much that she was slurping the broth off the spoon once all the delicious chunks were gone.

Finger Foods.  This saves you the time of having to sit down and feed your toddler if you have other things to do.  I keep the high chair in the kitchen, so I can clean bottles and still keep an eye on and interact with my daughter while my son hangs out in the mobile bassinet.  There is never just one of us in the kitchen.  Cooked and cooled pasta shapes, steamed soft vegetables, hard-boiled egg, small chunks of cheese, pieces of banana or orange, and a grilled cheese sandwich cut into small squares are all great mix-and-match ideas.  Make a plate based on what your kid likes that features at least a whole grain, a protein source and a vegetable, and let them do it themselves while you use that time to get something else done.

Watermelon Hands

When I was having difficulty getting my daughter to sleep, I did what nearly every other modern mom does:  I took to the internet.  Everything I read suggested all different kinds of techniques, but one theme rang true, and that was the ritual.  It seemed that if you followed a set ritual, something that was designed to calm your child down and prepare her for bed, nighttime would move a lot smoother and your child would be more susceptible to sleep.

Some of the rituals that families had were long-winded productions that ran night after night like a perfectly-scripted play that closed the curtain at exactly the same time every evening.  They consisted of several acts that dragged on for hours, and most of these families included a warm bath (with some kind of highly-advertised lavender soap marketed as a miracle sleep aid), songs, stories - an entire repertoire of calming activities that were to run immediately after dinner.

There's no way I could pull something like that off.  The planning and the execution must be exact, and I'm too carefree with my time to even joke about considering something so demanding.  

We never really had a ritual so much as we had bedtime techniques instead.  Evelyn and I would rock in the glider in the corner of her nursery, window open if the weather allowed it, listening to the sounds of the night as I sang softly to her until she fell asleep.  Then our rocking chair broke. 

It seemed that every time we got into some kind of ritual, the figurative rocking chair would break and we would be forced to improvise.  I won't bore you with all the details of every single ritual that has come and gone, but needless to say, we finally found one that we all as a family can live with.

Family Fruit Time

At 7:30 p.m., Dada changes Evelyn's diaper and puts her in her pajamas as I prepare her warm milk (an essential part of our ritual, of course).  Then, as her milk is sitting in a mug of hot water to slowly take the chill of the fridge off, we stand around the kitchen or sit at the bar and eat fruit together.

We giggle.  We feed each other.  We dribble juice down our chins.  It runs contrary to almost everything I've read about infant and toddler sleep:  Not only are we giving her sugar before bed, but we're also engaging her in a stimulating activity.  And yet she still drinks her milk a half hour later and is asleep by 8:30 p.m. every night.

The past two nights, we have been indulging in watermelon.  Sitting in her Dada's lap at the bar, she would slap her little hands on the granite in anticipation of each juicy bite as I stabbed into the pink fruit with a fork and presented it to her.  Sometimes, she would lean forward with her little mouth open like a baby bird and snatch the bite directly off the fork; other times, she would carefully pull it off the fork with gentle little fingers, sucking as much juice out as she could before finally popping the whole piece in her mouth.  

Tonight as we lay in bed together, she rolled toward me and pressed her little face up against mine, forehead to forehead, nose to nose.  Just before she fell asleep, she brought a little hand up to my face and cupped my chin.  It smelled like watermelon.

This too shall pass...

This ritual started one night when I dropped an apple and decided it had to be eaten before it sat around on the counter bruising up.  Jon-Michael was holding Evie and I was busy trying to eat as much of the crunchy skin off the apple as I could so she could tear at the white flesh with her little teeth.  We all ended up eating the apple together, standing there in the kitchen and laughing and just enjoying a moment of sweet simplicity together.

I know it will end, like all other rituals, to be replaced by something new.  Our son will be born soon, and the job of tackling a toddler ritual with a newborn ritual will begin, and togetherness in the kitchen around a piece of fruit probably won't be a possibility anymore.  I'm going to soak it up as much as I can, though.  Juicy, sticky chins and all.

First Birthday Smash Cake!

As I write this blog, it's difficult not to watch the clock and think to myself, "At this time last year, I was in a hospital bed simultaneously watching terrible television and the contraction monitor.  My husband (okay, fiance at the time... no one's perfect) was by my side, my mom was texting friends and family, and my dad was slouched on the couch in the low light of the birthing room.  In less than an hour, I'll have started pushing."

My daughter was born at 1:55 a.m. on March 3, 2011.  The days leading up to March 3, 2012, have been a lot more hectic than they were a year ago.  All I did then was sit around all day in pajamas stuffing my face with whatever food I could find, building houses in the Sims 3, and simply waiting uncomfortably for contractions to begin.  This year, however, it was all about party planning - busier, more stressful, but a lot more fun than the Waiting Game (which I have to look forward to next month when my son is due).

Packages started arriving in the mail full of party supplies that I ordered from three different websites in my hunt for the best deals; informal invitations were spread via Facebook, phone and word of mouth; food was purchased or pre-ordered; the house, cleaned and decorated. Including Evelyn's gifts, the whole thing cost us about $500 and a lot of energy.

And then I had to make a cake.

I don't bake.

My idea of baking up until this point has been opening a pouch of some kind of dessert mix and checking the back of the box to see how much oil and how many eggs to add.  Even then, I couldn't get it right:  Who knows how many brownies were burnt to the bottom of the pan, or how many dry cakes I pulled from the oven.

This year, it had to be different.  I've been doing too well with introducing my daughter to whole, real foods to let one day spoil it.  I wanted a simple cake made with simple ingredients that I could pronounce; I wanted to watch it be made from start to finish; I wanted no artificial flavors or colors or preservatives or any unnecessary additives.  You can't really find that from a box, but you can find it with a quick search of the internet.

I came across this recipe for an eggless whole wheat cake that I adapted slightly to reflect the ingredients that I had available.  Of course, I was skeptical and had every right to be.  No eggs, whole wheat flour, yogurt with vinegar.  What was I getting myself into?

Evelyn's Smash Cake

This cake made me nervous as I made it.  As I added the applesauce to the butter and sugar, it started to separate and look curdled.  The blog said it was going to do that, and it was fine, so I persisted.  Then, when I went to pour the batter into the cake pans, it was thick and gluey. I've never made a cake from scratch, but even I know that what I was pouring into those pans resembled more of a bread dough than anything.  The blog said it would be a little thick, so I persisted.

I watched through the oven door as the top of the cake began to harden like a bread crust, and small breaks along the surface started.  Here we go, I thought to myself.  You ruined your daughter's cake.  That recipe ruined your daughter's cake.  This cake ruined your daughter's cake.

When it was done, I scooped a corner of it out of the pan.  Yes, it had a slightly hard crust on top, but it was surprisingly soft inside - not spongy like the cake we're all usually used to, but it was more like a soft, dense banana bread.  The whole wheat flour mixed with the applesauce made it taste like sweet corn, and the first thing I thought was, "I just made corn bread without corn."  Subtly sweet, a little nutty, and too thick to really be cake.  This recipe should be rebranded as some kind of breakfast bread.  My husband insisted that melting butter on it would be perfect.

I gave Evelyn a little taste, and she did the classic "Give me more!" thing she does, which basically entails her grunting hard and pointing repeatedly at what she wants.  Really, the only thing that's important is that she liked it.  I liked it, too, honestly, but I would never serve it to guests as a cake.

For the record, everyone else at the party will be eating cupcakes from the local grocery store's bakery.

Eggless Whole Wheat Cake Breakfast Bread


Ingredients
1 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup butter
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp salt
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/2 Tbl apple cider vinegar
2 tsp real vanilla extract
1 cup plain whole milk yogurt

Technique

1.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and prepare two 8" round cake pans by greasing them or lining with parchment paper.
2.  Whisk together the flours, the baking powder and the baking soda in a medium bowl.
3.  Cream together the butter, sugar and salt in a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer until fluffy.
4.  Add to the butter mixture 1/4 of the applesauce at a time, mixing thoroughly before adding the next 1/4, and so on until the entire cup has been used.  *Here is where it will start to look curdled, but don't worry.
5.  Add about 1/3 of the flour mixture until well-incorporated to the butter/applesauce blend.
6.  To the cup of yogurt, add your vinegar and vanilla extract and stir well.
7.  Add half of the yogurt mix to the large bowl with the butter/applesauce/flour, and mix thoroughly.  Add another third of the flour, blending fully.  Then add the rest of the yogurt, mixing well (be sure the scrape the sides to be sure everything is well-incorporated into the batter).  Add the remaining flour and mix well.  *I gave up using the hand mixer around this time and used good ol' fashioned elbow grease and a strong fork to mix everything together.  It was really gummy.
8.  Spread the batter into your pans.  It's incredibly thick, so you'll have to smooth it with a spatula.  Pop them in the oven and give them about 30 minutes or so.  The time will vary depending on what kind and size pan you use (you can also use one 9x13 pan instead of two 8" round pans).  Always do the "toothpick test" to find out if it's done:  If a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean, you're good to go.

Conclusion

I think my cake was a little underdone.  I was getting very impatient as the time kept creeping on longer and longer and the toothpick still came out a tiny bit doughy from the very bottom of the cake.  Since there are no eggs in it sitting around being raw and disgusting, I figured this would be okay.

I also ended up using one pan because the pair of 8" round cake pans I thought I had turned out to be just one cake pan with an odd burn mark in the middle of it.  I used what I had, and that was an 8" square pan which seemed awkward but fit all the dough.  I'm not sure how long it actually took to bake the cake in that pan.  I just kept adding minutes to the timer every time I tried the toothpick and got frustrated.  I cut a circle out of the middle of it and peeled away the rest of the cake (which is sitting in chunks in a Ziploc in the fridge for later consumption, to be warmed with butter and served with Sunday breakfast).

The cake is now wrapped in plastic in the fridge as it waits to be frosted in the morning. Keeping with the overall simplicity of the cake itself, I'm making a whipped cream with a little sugar and natural orange flavoring to fluff all over the cake, but I wanted it to be as fresh as possible, so that's a chore for tomorrow before the party.

I already know Evie likes the cake itself, so that's not a problem.  I'm just hoping she knows how to be extremely entertaining when she realizes she can dig her little mitts in and get as messy as she wants.

UPDATE:  Please do not make this cake.  If you do, don't store it in the fridge.  It pretty much reverted back to a wet, disgusting uncooked state.  I literally cooked it again and then decided "Whatever, she won't eat it anyway."  Sure enough, she was too busy swiping whipped cream off the cake to even get her little fingers into the cake itself, so in the end it turned out fine.  But that "cake" was absolutely horrendous.  This is why I don't bake!