So, the little blogger app for my phone has not helped me post more frequently, it seems. That tiny keyboard drives me nuts for anything longer than a text message. But I digress.
My son, Joshua, is growing so so quickly! With moving to a new place and trying to get my home settled, I never did try to make my own baby food. We were getting baby food free from WIC, anyway; so while I wanted to do something better for him, I accepted that our needs were being met and an overwhelmed mommy was not going to do him any good. Then I read "Real Food for Mother and Baby," by Nina Planck, and we threw out the baby food altogether (this is just in the last month and a half). Joshua now eats - basically - whatever we eat. He definitely has a dairy allergy, and we have recently discovered an egg white allergy. No fun, but, I am learning so much about sticking to real foods and avoiding his allergies. So his breakfasts differ from ours (because we eat a lot of eggs and a lot of smoothies), and some of his other meals, too. So this another reason for infrequent posts, because I have been spending so much time in the kitchen I have not left myself time for writing about the kitchen.
Joshua basically eats meats, fruits, veggies, and some grains. While I have not seen an outright allergic reaction to wheat, his dad is gluten intolerant so I am being pretty wary of it. Some wheat things he seems to handle fine, and with other wheat foods his eczema has seemed to flair up. Lately, though, the eczema is diminishing greatly, and now he mostly breaks out in hives when he has a reaction.
I have to say, as much as I hated the eczema, I kind of prefer it to anything that could point to possible anaphylactic shock (which hives can be a precursor to in severe allergic reactions). I know it is a long shot but we are dealing with neurotic new mommy here and I have no shame in that. Hives are scarier for me than red scaly skin. I am sure Joshua prefers the hives, though, because they are transient and so he does not itch for nearly as long.
I have not seasoned anything as fully for him as I have for Jeff and myself, which means some extra steps in my cooking and such, but we tend to eat on the heavily seasoned side, and I do not know how he would handle things like peppers, or excessive garlic. I would say we eat garlic in excess.
So breakfast is usually fruit of some kind, and some (organic and soy-free) gluten-free O's if he is extra hungry. Fruit is either pears, bananas, or some kind of melon. He actually seems to prefer the ones that taste almost more like lightly sweetened cucumber than like the sweet melons I am used to. We have a good source of interesting heirloom melons at our local farmers market.
Lunch is often a reprise of the previous night's dinner, but sometimes is a hard-boiled egg yolk with a tiny bit of olive oil (to improve the texture) and some salt, along with cucumber slices. He loves pork chops (and ham, and bacon), chicken is probably next on the list, and then beef last, but he will eat all of them. I have not really tried any fish with him yet. I actually really want to try Nina Planck's suggestion of Salmon Roe, but it is pricey! If we have a little extra room in the grocery budget sometime soon, though, we will certainly give that a try. He likes the bone broth we've given him (so far just beef and chicken).
Sweet potatoes and green beans are probably his favorite cooked vegetables. Though he also really likes squash, carrots, and broccoli. Avocados, while technically a fruit, are probably his favorite raw veggie, but he only really gets those when we are eating Mexican. He likes rice, but I have not tried the quinoa with him, yet, in its whole form. He loves the quinoa pasta we get for Jeff, though. And he loves spaghetti squash and meatballs.
He has never had any kind of "dessert" food yet. He has never had anything with MSG or HFCS (and I hope to keep it that way for as long as I can). He has never had any juice, and never anything with any food dye in it (except in one teething gel when he first started teething. The cranky baby that resulted in has been motivation to keep him dye-free!).
He is seriously loving the self-feeding experience. And, in not pureeing anything, I get to eat my dinner at the same time as him, and family meal times are established. We eat together, we pray before we eat, we (generally) all leave the table at the same time. The biggest downside, as we prepare for weaning, is that the more food he eats (and the less he nurses) the more he gravitates away from me, toward his dad. And that is actually not a downside at ALL, but it does make me really miss those early days when Mommy was the most important one in his universe. Oh, dying to myself, why must you be so painful? Seriously, though, I love watching him watch Jeff. In play, when he works, all of it. He loves to sit and watch the chickens with Jeff, and he loves to watch Jeff's fish tank with him, too (a dream come true for Jeff, to be sure!).
He will be one year old in just shy of eight weeks and I am amazed, appalled, proud, nostalgic, happy, and bittersweet. My little man is growing up!
I do our meal plans Thurs-Wednesday, now, because we do the bulk of our shopping at the Farmers Market, but stay tuned for a meal plan post that should have gone up today! :)
My son, Joshua, is growing so so quickly! With moving to a new place and trying to get my home settled, I never did try to make my own baby food. We were getting baby food free from WIC, anyway; so while I wanted to do something better for him, I accepted that our needs were being met and an overwhelmed mommy was not going to do him any good. Then I read "Real Food for Mother and Baby," by Nina Planck, and we threw out the baby food altogether (this is just in the last month and a half). Joshua now eats - basically - whatever we eat. He definitely has a dairy allergy, and we have recently discovered an egg white allergy. No fun, but, I am learning so much about sticking to real foods and avoiding his allergies. So his breakfasts differ from ours (because we eat a lot of eggs and a lot of smoothies), and some of his other meals, too. So this another reason for infrequent posts, because I have been spending so much time in the kitchen I have not left myself time for writing about the kitchen.
Joshua basically eats meats, fruits, veggies, and some grains. While I have not seen an outright allergic reaction to wheat, his dad is gluten intolerant so I am being pretty wary of it. Some wheat things he seems to handle fine, and with other wheat foods his eczema has seemed to flair up. Lately, though, the eczema is diminishing greatly, and now he mostly breaks out in hives when he has a reaction.
I have to say, as much as I hated the eczema, I kind of prefer it to anything that could point to possible anaphylactic shock (which hives can be a precursor to in severe allergic reactions). I know it is a long shot but we are dealing with neurotic new mommy here and I have no shame in that. Hives are scarier for me than red scaly skin. I am sure Joshua prefers the hives, though, because they are transient and so he does not itch for nearly as long.
I have not seasoned anything as fully for him as I have for Jeff and myself, which means some extra steps in my cooking and such, but we tend to eat on the heavily seasoned side, and I do not know how he would handle things like peppers, or excessive garlic. I would say we eat garlic in excess.
So breakfast is usually fruit of some kind, and some (organic and soy-free) gluten-free O's if he is extra hungry. Fruit is either pears, bananas, or some kind of melon. He actually seems to prefer the ones that taste almost more like lightly sweetened cucumber than like the sweet melons I am used to. We have a good source of interesting heirloom melons at our local farmers market.
Lunch is often a reprise of the previous night's dinner, but sometimes is a hard-boiled egg yolk with a tiny bit of olive oil (to improve the texture) and some salt, along with cucumber slices. He loves pork chops (and ham, and bacon), chicken is probably next on the list, and then beef last, but he will eat all of them. I have not really tried any fish with him yet. I actually really want to try Nina Planck's suggestion of Salmon Roe, but it is pricey! If we have a little extra room in the grocery budget sometime soon, though, we will certainly give that a try. He likes the bone broth we've given him (so far just beef and chicken).
Sweet potatoes and green beans are probably his favorite cooked vegetables. Though he also really likes squash, carrots, and broccoli. Avocados, while technically a fruit, are probably his favorite raw veggie, but he only really gets those when we are eating Mexican. He likes rice, but I have not tried the quinoa with him, yet, in its whole form. He loves the quinoa pasta we get for Jeff, though. And he loves spaghetti squash and meatballs.
He has never had any kind of "dessert" food yet. He has never had anything with MSG or HFCS (and I hope to keep it that way for as long as I can). He has never had any juice, and never anything with any food dye in it (except in one teething gel when he first started teething. The cranky baby that resulted in has been motivation to keep him dye-free!).
He is seriously loving the self-feeding experience. And, in not pureeing anything, I get to eat my dinner at the same time as him, and family meal times are established. We eat together, we pray before we eat, we (generally) all leave the table at the same time. The biggest downside, as we prepare for weaning, is that the more food he eats (and the less he nurses) the more he gravitates away from me, toward his dad. And that is actually not a downside at ALL, but it does make me really miss those early days when Mommy was the most important one in his universe. Oh, dying to myself, why must you be so painful? Seriously, though, I love watching him watch Jeff. In play, when he works, all of it. He loves to sit and watch the chickens with Jeff, and he loves to watch Jeff's fish tank with him, too (a dream come true for Jeff, to be sure!).
He will be one year old in just shy of eight weeks and I am amazed, appalled, proud, nostalgic, happy, and bittersweet. My little man is growing up!
I do our meal plans Thurs-Wednesday, now, because we do the bulk of our shopping at the Farmers Market, but stay tuned for a meal plan post that should have gone up today! :)
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