… Because I don’t know how we lived without it.
See, I had been feeling pretty uncomfortable about this whole “solid foods” thing. It’s something I hadn’t quite admitted to myself or on this blog, but it’s true. I couldn’t put my finger on it, and I definitely felt as though it was something very personal, but I kept wondering to myself why everyone asked if we had tried the baby cereals yet. I wondered why everyone asked automatically about the cereals, even the doctor. I wondered whether babies started with rice cereal in Mexico, or Pakistan, or Zimbabwe, or Japan. Looking at the cereal, which resembles fish food more than anything else, I wondered what magical properties it possessed that the brown rice or oatmeal in my cabinet didn’t have. Okay, so I can read on the box that there’s an iron supplement, but what the heck? If the babies NEED the iron, isn’t there some other way for them to get it besides adding some supplement, which more than likely can’t be absorbed by the body anyway? And I especially wondered how Masher would transition to eating the food that we eat when he’s starting out eating food a world away … and in a part of the grocery store I rarely visit, the aisles. As a girl who shops around the outskirts for fresh vegetables, fruit, meat, and dairy, with monthly ventures into the aisles for whole grains and beans, I couldn’t understand what I was doing staring at a small shelf of canned strained chicken and peas and the like. I eat at the farmers’ market. Can’t my baby do the same?
So, like any good 21st century dweller, I Googled. And I came across a really helpful web site that began to address many of my concerns … and led me to a book, which I ordered on Amazon.com (yay for the Internet, again!) and that was delivered to my house a day later: Feeding the Whole Family: Recipes for Babies, Young Children, and Their Parents. And, after one read, I decided this would probably have to be my new bible.
A paragraph from the book that sums up the answer to my concerns:
When we give babies separate meals made of factory-created food that is bland and full of fillers, we do them a disservice. This trains them to expect separate meals and prefer bland empty calories. Do your children a favor and introduce them to food with flavor. Let them recognize a variety of simply prepared whole foods as the familiar tastes that trigger “home” in their mind and bodies. Feed them what you eat. Make what you eat good enough to feed your baby.
— Cynthia Lair
Look. It would be one thing if I were still working 50+ hours a week. And as the author of the book points out, there are organic processed baby foods out there these days, which is a huge step forward as far as processed baby food goes. And it would be another thing if my husband and I didn’t already eat pretty conscientiously. (I say “conscientiously” because we always cook organic and heavily local at home, but we are equally happy to stuff our faces with nachos and beef fajitas at Rio Grande from time to time.) But I’m not working now, and – as family – we’ve already made huge strides toward eating primarily “whole foods” (Michael Pollan of The Omnivore’s Dilemma asks, “Would your grandmother recognize the substance as food?”). I think we’re ready to go the whole way.
So, what does this Cynthia woman recommend as baby’s first food? Apples, avocados, bananas, carrots, sweet potatoes, peas, and winter squash, any of which should be cooked, mashed, and mixed with breastmilk or water (if necessary) to the consistency of soup. Sounds delicious. Scratch everything that came before. We start anew.
Drink of Water 