Intro

My husband and I will admit that we are foodies.  I have always had a passion for cooking - my dad always had an amazing garden and I grew up learning go cook from him and my family.  When I was 14 I made a 10 course meal for my 6 friends, and when I was 24 I made a 9 course Hawaiian meal for 24 friends.  Both my husband and I have always gone out to eat at nice restaurants with our families growing up, and have only become more and more addicted to that as we've aged with our double income lifestyle.  Our wedding was centered around new food and friends.  We've tried out some of the most amazing restaurants in Boston, and even around the world.  Whenever we plan a vacation, one of the first things I research is where to get the best food!  I own well over 200 cookbooks, and equally as many cooking magazines.  We love fancy cheese, good wine, crazy cocktails and great home cooked meals.

Fast forward to us having our first child.  Yeah I'm a bit overly ambitious.  When I was pregnant I of course paid attention to what I ate, but I also spent an insane amount of time planning what we would eat AFTER the baby arrived.  I scoured websites for great freezer meals, and we took the plunge and ordered a large stand up freezer for the basement.  We spent many late nights cooking and FILLED it with foods for my husband and I and our guests, since the rumor was that I would not have time to cook much at all once the baby was born.  We had mini chicken pot pies, pork and prune ragu, eggplant handpockets, calzones, etc!!

As we worked to deplete those supplies, I had originally imagined filling the freezer with breastmilk for our baby.  Unfortunately with my supply being too low, we ended up supplementing, and I never ended up building up much of a "stash".  I was happy that I was able to make it to 6 months, even though an entire day of pumping at work (5 times - 30 minutes each!) would only yield enough for a single 4oz bottle.  But I gave her what I could, and I was happy with that.  So around 4 months when our pediatrician told us we could start introducing rice cereal, and gradually purees, we wanted to take the time to make sure we did  the food thing right, since I would wean her off of breastmilk in the 6-7month timeframe.

Of course sharing food with our little girl was going to be a big thing for us.  I'm not much into processed foods, and prefer to do fresh whenever possible. Good friends of ours had told us about this whole "Baby Led Weaning" movement... I had originally anticipating making and freezing tons of purees, but BLW meant you just wait until 6 months and give the baby real people food - well ok, soft cooked and no salt, but pretty close to real people food.  Since we were already well past 4 months, and I wasn't all that excited about rice cereals and spoon feeding jarred stuff, I figured it was worth a shot.  One of the biggest things we liked about it was that it seemed to produce kids that were not picky eaters, and that was important to us.  Plus it sounded super easy - just give them some of whatever is on your plate!

Well so far it has been a bit more complicated than "just whatever is on your plate" - making seasoned foods means adding salt! it is highly suggested to not add salt to baby's food, and making foods soft enough and shaped for baby to start on takes a bit more work that I originally thought.  Plus I decided to add in some purees for fun.  I had some friends who did the BLW thing say that their kids then hated to use utensils, and I read about some kids who then hated purees (even applesauce!).  So I figured why not take a hybrid approach to how we fed our little girl?  Give her foods for all her senses!

Some additional background - I love to cook with fresh ingredients! For a couple of years I had a HUGE garden, it was longer than our house and probably could have fed a family of 15.  This year we only have a small garden (thankfully my dad came up and helped, or it would have been no garden at all!), but I still buy plenty of fresh produce.  I will admit, I am not hooked on organic foods.  For some, I will buy it, but only if it is either close to the same price, or something I worry about pesticides on, or if for some reason it stays fresher.  For example, I hate buying organic bananas - they seem to go bad twice as fast.  But I always buy organic spinach (sometimes I like to cheat and not wash it, and for whatever reason the plastic boxes of the organic spinach seem to stay good twice as long).  Things like carrots where I'm lazy and don't always peel them and the price is pretty similar, I prefer to buy organic, but I can't say there is a solid method to my madness.  Often it comes down to is the price hike worth it and is the food going to last just as long? I know many food purists will swear by organic, but I'm just personally not obsessed with it.  Do I prefer good local food when available? of course!! but when the $10 local farmers market corn tastes like cardboard, and the $5 stop and shop corn tastes like butter... guess which one I am going to buy??

And along with my cooking/eating hobby/obsessions, I've also taken on a photography hobby, and my husband got me a great lens for mothers day, so I figured this was a good chance to share some adorable photos of our little one and her food.

So in this blog I will document our journey in baby food & baby learning to eat!!

We hope you enjoy!!