Spinach Soup

At first bite, our son acted like it was poison. But then when we weren't looking, he grabbed my big soup spoon and was spooning it in like it was delicious. And it was.

This is modified from a Vegetarian Times recipe.

Spinach Soup with Paneer

2 T butter, divided
1 small onion, chopped
1 T thinly sliced ginger
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
3 t curry powder
4 c vegetable broth
1 pound spinach
4 oz paneer cheese, cubed

1. Heat 1 T butter in a soup pot over medium heat. Add onion and cook for three minutes.
2. Stir in ginger, garlic, and curry. Cook for one minute.
3. Stir in spinach. Cook for a few minutes more, until wilted and bright.
4. Purée until smooth.
5. Heat remaining 1 T butter in skillet over medium heat. Add paneer cubes and cook five to seven minutes, until golden brown, turning occasionally. Add to soup bowls at the table.

Why So Few Recipes?

I love to cook, and I was very excited when our son started eating solids so we could share our food with him. I had initially planned to post a recipe a week that I found to be particularly successful. Why only two so far? It turns out we have a picky eater.

my lunch box might as well be empty

I have so long avoided using the word "picky," instead using thesaurus companions such as "selective" and "choosy" and even "discerning." But let's not kid ourselves.

It isn't that he won't try new foods or that he won't eat more than a couple types of foods. He has eaten and enjoyed spicy Indian food and rommegrot, a Norwegian sour cream pudding. He's chowed down on beets and lentils, spinach and persimmons. However, many meals for him are a teensy bite of each thing, even when we offer him a variety that includes his favorite foods or things he ate with gusto just the day before.

When he was sick this past week, he mostly refused to eat. It was starting to get distressing. But tonight when I was putting away the groceries, he saw the hummus, and he started smacking his lips. Feeling hopeful, I scooped some into a bowl and took out crackers. He was double-dipping like George Costanza at a buffet. I even gave him seconds.

There are different types of eaters, and there are even different types of picky eaters. Those kids who only eat pasta and Cheerios? At least they are eating. Our little guy is unpredictable, and every meal I hope hope hope that more will end up in his belly than on the floor.

Highchairs

During the festive season, it is common for us to eat meals out of the home. Our son would love to always dine while sitting on my lap, but I would not love the mess. When we went to my mom's house for Thanksgiving, we brought our highchair with us. When we ate dinner at our friends' house this evening, we used their highchair, which happens to be the same as ours--the $25 Ikea Antilop chair. I have seen highchairs as expensive as $650, but this Ikea one does the job beautifully.

First we had a Chicco chair that my mom found at the Goodwill. It was huge, and the seat was padded. Our little guy was tiny and frightened to sit in it, and it was a cleaning nightmare. The Ikea chair that we use now has a super simple design with a small footprint, it is easy to move around, and--most importantly--is a breeze to wipe clean.

Here are some things to consider when shopping for a highchair:

• It must be easy to clean--padding is not easy to clean, and it can get disgusting. Babies do not need padding on their bums to eat. They are already wearing diapers. They do not need padding on their backs because they should be sitting up anyway, not leaning back.
• It should be easy to disassemble so you can take it with you, if so desired.
• It should fit your child. Most babies are ready to sit up and eat when they are about 6 months. If they can't sit up without support, they aren't ready to eat solids or go in a highchair. Wait until the baby needs the chair; it is easy to overestimate how big a 6 month old is.
• It should be light enough to move around or have wheels. The highchair we have is so easy to move that it also serves as a push toy that our son enjoys moving from the kitchen to the dining room.
• It should fit the space where it will live for about 2 years. 

We are happy with our highchair and the money we saved could be spent on bibs, spoons, and sippy cups.

I am Thankful for Good Food

Tonight we ate wild mushroom and chevre pizza and drank wine while we chopped, steamed and sautéed food for tomorrow. This is part of our Thanksgiving tradition, and it reminds me how grateful I am to have excellent food choices all around me.

We get most of our food from a farmers market, but Berkeley has grocery stores with fabulous selections, whether we need local produce or products from other countries. Want fair trade organic 70% dark chocolate? Check. Want black rice? Check. Need half a gallon of whole goat milk? No problem. Recipe calls for saffron? Choose from five options. Our son gets to eat cardamom ice cream, persimmons, Asian pears, organic avocados, goat milk yogurt, and roast beets. What a lucky little guy, I think, as he throws half of it on the floor.

We used to live in an apartment building that had a needle exchange van visit once a week. The needle exchange offered free food to the clients and also to the people who lived in the building. We accepted the food because we were rather poor at the time, living in a mildewy studio in a building with evidently a high number of needle users. There was always cabbage, pasta, and day old bread. I often made braised cabbage and pasta with peanuts; this I remembered when I recently found the recipe that I used to use. We also would go to a bagel shop for a dozen day-old bagels which we would eat for lunch with freshly ground peanut butter. The food budget was low, but we never had to skip a meal.

Good food is all around us, even when we don't have much money to spend on it. It is easy to forget how lucky we are that there is an excess of food available to us, much of it affordable, and not all of it junk. I am thankful for the food choices I have, and I am thankful that my son can be exposed to such a wide variety.

Easy Meals

I love to cook, but sometimes I don't have the energy or time or two hands to chop, saute, and assemble. Now that our 1-year-old is eating what we eat, I also have to make sure that it is manageable for him to self-feed as finger food and that there are enough fat and nutrients. Here are some easy meals that we all like:

• Ready made tamales from the fresh food section
• Tubetti pasta, Brussels sprouts, and ground hazelnuts
• Boxed butternut squash soup with cheesy toast
• French fingerling potatoes with raclette cheese or with tapenade (blended olives, olive oil and garlic)
• Angel hair pasta, frozen peas, and crumbled hard boiled eggs
• Black rice, tofu, and Thai peanut sauce

Basics to have on hand: variety of pasta shapes, boxed soups, hazelnuts, olive oil, cans of olives, variety of interesting cheeses, frozen peas and Brussels sprouts, eggs, tamales, dried black beans, black rice, tofu

Backyard Picnic

Today we had a spontaneous backyard picnic.

Mealtimes have not been so leisurely lately. We watch over our son to make sure he doesn't choke and that he eats enough food. He often eats a bit and then throws a lot of it on the floor. Then he complains about being in the high chair. When he is free to wander about, he squats down to pick up and eat what he has thrown on the floor. I know, I know--this is all setting him up for poor table time behavior, but we really want him to eat and we also want to eat in peace. Finally, we clean up the baby, wipe the tray, gather crumbs from seat, scrub the floor.

Today was an unseasonably warm November day, and the sun was perfectly shining on our backyard at lunchtime. We decided to bring out a big blanket and eat al fresco. What fun! The best part was that our son was already on the ground. He didn't have to protest the high chair, and I didn't have to feel guilty that I was letting him eat off of the blanket. It was the most he has eaten for lunch in a while, and we were all in jolly spirits. After lunch, there was no table, tray, seat, or floor to scrub. We just shook the crumbs off of the blanket and played in the grass.

Good On-line Resources for Nursing Moms

Have a question about nursing in the middle of the night and can't ask a friend? Need to know how to get ready to go back to work and continue breastfeeding? Ready to wean and have no idea how to get your one-year-old to sleep at night without mama time? Doing a web search often leads one to fluff articles and comment boards full of panic and devoid of fact. When you need an answer to pressing questions, these are good resources to have bookmarked.

http://kellymom.com/
This detailed site is filled with clear answers about nursing and nutrition. It also links to research and other informative articles and has good advice for teaching "breastfeeding manners" and for figuring out how much milk you need to express for the workday.

http://www.llli.org/
La Leche League International is the main source for information and advocacy about breastfeeding. The site has a lot of information--maybe even too much for the way it is organized. But they have it all--answers for nursing moms about housework, traveling, and working.

Kaiser Permanente
Since this is my health care provider, this is my go-to place for most health questions. It sometimes gives too obvious information for my taste--the breastfeeding section starts off with the question "What is breastfeeding?"

Baby Led Weaning

I checked out the book Baby Led Weaning from the library a couple of months ago, thinking it would give me advice about weaning my baby from nursing. Instead, the book was about a way to start babies on solids without using the jars, pouches, and boxes of baby food. Ever. Just wait for the baby to grab your food off of your plate and let them eat what they grab. This idea has been around forever, but it was revolutionary to me when I read it.

The benefits of baby led weaning is that babies begin eating the same variety of tastes, textures, and colors that the family eats, when the baby is ready. Mealtimes become sensory experiences. Meanwhile, babies learn to chew the food down with their gums and discover how to move the food around their mouths without choking on it. This sounds terrifying, but at 6 months or so, their gag reflex is nearer to the front of their tongue, so they gag food way before it reaches the back of their throat. For the busy parent, it frees up the time and stress of preparing purees and spoonfeeding them. The book addresses concerns about allergies as well.

When we first started solids, between 5 and 6 months, I was determined that it would be all homemade and as close to what we eat as possible. In practice, life happened. I tried to create menus out of limited ingredients, set aside vegetables to boil down and puree, and wasted food and time after discovering that things like potatoes do not freeze well. I ended up feeding him a lot of yogurt, avocado, and bananas because they were easy and didn't require cooking. Realizing that he needed variety that I didn't have the energy to provide for every meal, I started buying jars and pouches of bland yet expensive baby food. The ideas in this book I accidentally stumbled upon seemed very appealing to me.

In reality, it is very difficult to be absolute in anything in the realm of feeding. It is expensive and a hassle to provide him only bought baby food--but it is convenient and there is a reassurance that the baby won't choke. It is time-intensive to offer him only homemade food--but it is inexpensive and allows control over the ingredients and texture. As for baby led weaning, it sounds ideal, but is hard as a new parent to trust that the baby will eat what he needs when you see pieces of pasta on the floor, grated cheese crammed into the nooks of the high chair, and mashed potatoes in the diaper. Did he eat anything? Probably...How much? Not sure...Babies won't starve themselves, right? I hope not...Plus, child care centers much prefer methods that are fast and clean. Baby led weaning is neither.

The book is informative and the authors are passionate about the topic. Reading the book made me feel braver about offering him things like apple and peach slices before he even had teeth, and it was amazing to see how he was able to manipulate the slices and scrape away food with his gums. I can't give up the morning fortified grain cereal or the lunch yogurt, and I am mindful about what I pack in his school lunch, but it has definitely been fun sharing our seasonal food-based family dinners together.