On Raisins &c.

My M.O. for making my own baby food has been pretty simple: if Gerber/Del Monte doesn't make it, then I will. I don't see any point to going through all that effort for something that already exists. Plus, we often feed Kirk on the go so we need portable chow. Frozen puree cubes just aren't portable. Kirk really enjoyed the stage 1 prunes but I can't seem to find any in stage 2. (There were also tons of awesome foods that we saw in the grocery store in Texas that we don't have here. Ham and papayas. Mangos. Guavas. All sorts of tropical goodness. It's not fair.) So I reconstituted some raisins and tossed 'em in the food processor. They were a bit tangy for him. He really liked it at first, but after half a serving, it was just too much flavor. Earlier this week I hit upon the idea of mixing a raisin cube with half of his last banana serving. It's not like he was going to eat the bananas plain! And it worked perfectly. It wasn't too banana-y or too raisin-y. Tonight I tried again with the remaining bananas. I think he's on to me. He started making his "ew" face. Which is different from his flavor pucker. I'll have to think up something else to mix the rest of the raisin cubes with.

Mr. b thinks that adding a raisin cube or two to some chicken salad would be a perfect fit. I think I'll have to give that a whirl next time I make some. But I put fresh grape halfs in mine. Would that be weird to mix with raisin puree? I always think it's weird to eat corn salsa with corn tortilla chips. Incidentally, the raisin cubes don't freeze quite solid. They are still a slightly viscous liquid. So it was a challenge removing them from the ice cube tray since I couldn't just crack them out. It was more like a Jell-o mold.

I wonder if the frozen food cubes would be good for Kirk to suck on? It would make a helluva mess! And I suppose he's already learning about self-feeding with his little baby snacks. He likes zweiback toasts and arrowroot crackers and these groovy veggie puffs that Gerber makes that melt in your mouth so you don't have to worry about choking. The sweet potato ones are really, really good! And we got him a little mesh food holder deal, like this, that we can put fruit slices (or veggies or meat or whatever) in for him to gnaw on.

I still wonder about food allergies and all the introduction rules. I know he's fine with wheat since he's had mixed grain cereal. He had already had rice and oatmeal and barley so I figured we had waited plenty long. I think we're still supposed to wait until 1 year before strawberries, though he's already had other berries like blueberries. Maybe they're not the same type of whatever it is that can be allergenic? I'm not really sure how much longer we have to wait before he can start with citrus. I know we're supposed to hold off on peanuts, all nuts now, for as long as possible. And eggs are supposed to be introduced later, too. Maybe we can do those next. Since Kirk doesn't have teeth yet I have to make sure that everything is squishy enough for him to handle. So pieces of cheese are still out. Well, he doesn't even like cottage cheese yet (I think he has a texture issue--he made the same face when we tried to feed him chopped up spaghetti off our own dinner plates) so I guess we'll just stick to yogurt on the dairy front.

PS--Major congratulations to Diablo on her upcoming Letterman appearance! That's so kickass!