Real Food

The time has come for Jillian to delve into the wonderful world of fine cuisine. You may recall that I mentioned awhile back that Jillian's pediatrician said it was A-OK to start rice cereal. After my initial posting about it, we sort of decided she wasn't ready. She was interested, but developmentally not ready. So we put it away for awhile. Over the last ten days, Jillian has proven that she IS in fact now ready to begin this adventure. She has been gobbling up rice cereal like a champ. Matt asked me when I was going to start giving her some veggies, and my reply was "when she's 6 months old". He asked me the same question again (and got the same reply) this weekend. You see, I am a go by the book kind of girl. I like rules, guidelines, and such that let me know I am making the "right" decision about all kinds of things....I admit this about myself, and also admit that I can be a bit inflexible about such things. Matt challenged me this weekend when he said, "what exactly is going to magically change in 10 days that will make offering her vegetables ok?". Hmmm....good point. So that brings me to my mission of the day: make Jilly some tasty baby food. I have always wanted to make my own baby food (as much as is reasonably possible anyway). My mom made a good deal of mine, and I enjoyed hearing stories growing up of how she made "cookies" (individual portions of food, frozen on a cookie sheet and then bagged) of all sorts of good fruits and veggies. Everyone knows I love to cook, and so it should be of no surprise that I have looked forward to cooking for Jillian, even at this stage of eating. So today, I purchased some beautiful organic, locally grown sweet potatoes and I whipped them up into a smooth, colorful puree. Never has boiling sweet potatoes and popping them in the food processor been so fun (ok, I have never done those exact two things together before). I was pleased at how fast and easy it was to produce twelve little servings of food for my babe (and cheap--all of that out of only two sweet potatoes!). Feeling ever so proud of myself, I was ready and excited to let Jillian sample the goods...of course we captured the first bites on camera.

Digging in...she's excited to give it a go


The verdict? Hmmm....not as excited as I had hoped.

She did, however, go back for a few more bites. All in all, a successful first attempt!