Adventures in Eating

This post has been a longtime coming for most of you! Doug and I have wanted to share our fun stories and pictures of James eating with you very badly. First of all, we would like to say thank you to Mommom Liz for the GREAT babycook – it has made making James’ baby food such a pleasure and a joy for both of us. Making baby food is probably the easiest thing to make in the kitchen and it’s so rewarding to do because you know that you’re giving your child the best thing possible. Doug and I have had so much fun making and trying James’ food.



For making the food, the basic steps are wash, peel, chop, steam, and puree. Sometimes we leave the skins on fruit so that the vitamins are absorbed into the flesh and then peel the fruit post-steam. So far we’ve made sweet potatoes, zucchini, carrots, yellow squash, yams, peas, corn, green beans, butternut squash, nectarines, peaches, apples, bananas, pears and mangoes. Out of these, James has eaten everything but the corn, green beans, nectarines, peaches and mangoes.

You may be asking – where is all of this baby food? Well, glad you asked! After we make the food, we pour it into ice cube trays, freeze it and then put it into storage bags in the freezer – the food lasts 3 months! Our freezer is PACKED with baby food. But, it makes life so easy when all you have to do is take out two cubes and defrost them over night in the fridge in these great little Tupperware containers Dad found at the grocery store!

From the left: pears, peas, nectarines, and zucchini

Also, the variety of food that we are able to give James is just huge compared to the offerings at the grocery store: sweet potatoes, carrots, peas and pears. Even better – jars of baby food cost $.85 at the grocery store and that price is without the 10.25% tax in Chicago – we’re saving A LOT of money by doing this too! Ok, off my soap box and on to the adventures of eating starring James Douglas!

James is an eating champion! Every time we introduce a new food, we get a sour face – the face is best described as when you bite into a sweet and sour candy. It’s like his taste buds are being overwhelmed by flavor. We always have the food with rice cereal so that we can go back and forth between the two. By the second day, James can’t get enough of the food. He just loves it! It does not matter what the food is either. We always start off with the rice cereal and he’s happy eating that. Then we give him a few bites of the food and then – bam – he just wants that food and he wants it fast! It’s amazing to watch and over the course of our time eating, James’ learning curve has just been awesome. He now is able to open his mouth when the spoon is coming and less and less of the food ends up on his bib. He gives us huge smiles during feedings and sometimes even ‘talks’ to us. I assume that he’s telling us to give his compliments to the chefs :o) If I had to say which foods were James’ favorites so far, I would have to say sweet potatoes are his #1 by far, followed very closely by pears. Zucchini is next (I think he finds it refreshing), then apples, and then carrots. We haven’t done a lot of fruits yet so this of course could totally change. We’re afraid to give him the mangoes, peaches and nectarines because we think he’ll never go back to the veggies. We’ve tried them and they taste DELICIOUS – I’m surprised a cube or two of these fruits has not disappeared from the freezer … We’ll update as the new foods are introduced!

Happy Cooking and Happy Eating!

"The Pea Goatee"

The very first bite of solid food - sweet potatoes

Mmmmmmmmm Sweet Potatoes!

Tastebud Overload

What is this?

Our messy little pumpkin