Misadventures with Broccoli

So, as previously posted Lola has begun eating food. I have/had big plans for making all of her baby food from scratch. Unfortunately, I have not had the time/equipment to make it quite successfully.

We started with rice cereal which is not easily replicated at home, so I bought that and procured a fancy (affordable) food mill in anticipation of starting her on vegetables. I chose a non-electric one because 1- it's cheap and 2 - I have a food processor, a blender, and a hand blender so I figured I was covered in the electric arena and didn't need to spend money to get one labeled "Baby."

Anyhow, when it came time to try a new food I decided on green beans because I had them in the freezer! Thanks angelfood! I quickly discovered that you need a formidable amount of beans in the grinder to make it work as the sheer mass of food being pushed by the metal disc is what helps push it through the sieve. So I had to make a lot more than I bargained for and the skins were too tough and just collected in the bottom while i pushed them around. After about 20 minutes I collected about 2 tablespoons of baby green beans that had made it through the sieve (and a cup of mushed and mangled ones in the mill) and fed them to Lola. It was very anticlimactic she took it all in stride and didn't seem to notice the difference from rice cereal.

So, I decided I would buy pre-baby-fied green beans and move on to other vegetables with the food mill. I rummaged through the freezer and faced with lima beans or broccoli I decided broccoli had to be easy to grind! Maybe it was, don't really remember...what I do remember is Lola turning red and choking and me panicking and wishing I had taken that course on baby Heimlich and CPR.

After the trauma I realized that I have never seen broccoli in the baby food aisle, and the fibrousness of the broccoli keeps it gritty no matter how small you grind it so the grit was most likely the problem.

Back to baby cereal and liquified green beans for the time being. I'm not giving up but I will be getting the blender out because for now at least I think I need some motorized, electric, pulverizing help. I wonder if I could get one of these...

Baby's first dinner!

We went to the pediatrician today for Lola's 4 month (though she's almost 5 months) check up and the doctor gave the go ahead for food! I had been concerned that Lola wasn't getting enough food because she is very fussy about taking her bottle and it is difficult to get her to drink even the lowest end of the range for her age. However, Doctor said her weight is fine and to just follow her lead.

I knew if I went home before I went to the store I wouldn't be able to bring myself to venture back out so I didn't take the time to research what I wanted to buy, which in hindsight might not have been the best thing to do as I thing I should have gone for a brown rice cereal instead of the plain rice cereal but for all of you better prepared mothers out there this seems to be a pretty good mini article about choosing baby's first cereal.

Anyhow, we came home and whipped up an exciting mix of formula and rice cereal. Yum! I thought it was ok- much tastier than formula, Daddy thought it was disgusting and baby thought it was delicious!




It's so exciting- she actually LIKES eating food as opposed to breast milk or formula. She opened her mouth for more! We're going to try her on this for three days to make sure she doesn't have any adverse reactions and then introduce a vegetable! Give that three days and so on and so forth to make sure we isolate any foods that cause a bad reaction.

I'm really, really excited about trying out my new food mill! Any suggestions for baby's first vegetable? I'm leaning towards green beans.