Saturday, April 10, 2010

MOVING BEYOND MUSH:

She sits at the end of my kitchen table in a tidy clip-on highchair. So far she sports an adventurous appetite. Tonight's spinach dahl may have been too much too soon, however. She ate a fair few spoonfuls, while giving me odd looks, but soon grew grumpy and smeared the red lentil dahl around her face and shouted to be removed from her highchair.

We're moving beyond mush. I want to share with her the many interesting flavors and textures of food. I don't want bland to be the norm. But salt is no good for babies (and that includes salty foods). Nuts are controversial. Butter is out. Sugar is a no-no. Spicy is a bit scary.

I aim to have her eating (almost) everything we eat within a year, when she will be 19 months.

Tasty, healthy and affordable meals will be created to inspire both adults and babies. If not in one mouthful, at least with similar ingredients. Billie is not yet digging into my various versions of vegetarian lasagna, but she loves munching on the chunks of roasted courgette, pumpkin and kumara.

Bon Appetite

Sarah

3 comments:

  1. Paul tried his first olives in Italy when he was 8 months old. He still loves them. So is Billie all vegetarian then? Not sure when he first tried food with a bit of spice but he has not been too worried about it. Early on Paul ate anything we put in front of him. As he has got older he is a bit fussier. I think it is being more aware and being able to say what he likes and doesn’t. Still he eats a good variety of food and knows the names of herbs and vegetable in the garden. Very handy when you want some herbs, I send him out to pick them for me. Petrina often says he will eat green leaves from the garden but put them in front of him inside on his plate and he turns his nose up.

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  2. Interesting...Billie eats everything within her arms' reach. SO far, so good. She has a particular addiction to grass and pot plant leaves. The only edible plant we have is a very enthusiastic oregano. Unfortunately there are a lot of stairs between home and the shared backyard so I don't see Billie being sent on picking missions anytime soon.

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