Baby Food

I haven’t considered myself super creative with baby food- but I admit I’ve had fun feeding my son.  With the help of his babysitter, we have blended and steamed up veggies and fruits of all kinds. Recently, while enjoying a sunny day in the park, several of my mommy friends took notice of the concoction I was feeding him. The simple mixture was organic plain yogurt mixed with mashed bananas and sweet potato. The idea is, get in several food groups in one shot: dairy, fruit, and veggie. Recently, I’ve started adding butternut squash or carrot to the yogurt mixture. Unlike many other philosophies that evolve around baby’s pallets, I’m not trying to hide ingredients from him so he just blindly eats them, I actually want him to taste ingredients in their most pure form- so he recognizes and enjoys their taste. I also want him to have a healthy relationship to food- even foods that maybe aren’t high on the nutritional scale but are fun to eat. The other day we went out for lunch as a family to a Tribeca Italian café. We ordered salad and homemade brick oven pizza piled with arugula and fresh tomatoes. Yum. After Micah had his yogurt and fruit/veggies mix, I began sharing with him pieces of tomatoes and cucumbers from the salad. Once he ate a good amount of those, I allowed him to hold some pizza crust and to nibble on it. He was made happy by its oven-baked tomatoes-y flavor and I was made happy by how nicely he behaved during our family lunch. I realized that I want my son to not only eat well but to have a healthy relationship to food. To be curious about flavors and to enjoy social moments around the meal table. So far so good.