Charlie is now 10 months old. Those early days of trial and error were challenging, but they paid off. Charlie now eats EVERYTHING. I gradually introduced all foods, varying texture, cooking method and flavour to make the best babyfood possible. I now have a baby who eats and enjoys a wide variety of healthy foods. People say I am lucky, but I don't think its luck, but hard work. I've decided to start a babyfood company. All the research and effort over the past few months will support a growing business plan for a company called Pat-a-cake. The focus will be on organic frozen baby food. At 10 months, Charlie now eats what we eat. This was accomplished by slowing exposing him to an increasingly wider range of textures and flavours, and also by modifying our diet to be more suitable for a baby. I believe this is ideal. Family meals are important for a number of reasons. I'd like to morph this blog from a 'how to make babyfood' site to a 'how to make one family meal that everyone can enjoy' site.. However, it is difficult to cook three times a day. Enter convenience foods. Dry cereals, lunch meats and jarred pasta sauces and chicken nuggets. If you are commited to serving healthy food, it is possible to avoid all processed convenience stuff. For me, freezing food in ice cubes has been a perfect option. I really enjoy doing it, and it takes no time at all to pop some cubes in a bowl and microwave them.

Avocado Allergy

Yesterday I tried to give him a ripe organic avocado. Most of the books reccomend mashing with a fork, but that left lumps that induced the tongue-thrust reflex. I passed the mash through a fine sieved strainer, and he liked that better, but it left tiny seedy-like pieces that caused a gag reflex.

Last night I had the idea to use a morter and pestle, as this is the traditional way to macerate avocado for guacamole. It worked, he liked it! My victory over avocado texturizing was shortlived, as he developed allergic symptoms. Little red dots on his mouth, chin and neck plus lots of loose stools.

I decided to give him a day off to let his gut heal. I'm not sure what to try next. I broke down and bought some Nestle rice cereal. I noticed inulin on the ingredient list. Inulin is a trendy food additive these days showing up in many health and wellness products. It's an extract of chicory root that is used as a sugar and fat substitute, as well as a source of soluble fiber and as a prebiotic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inulin I don't like the idea of this additive showing up in baby food. My guy does not need any help in moving his bowels along! If it is used purely for organoleptic purposes (texture and consistency) to make the puree more homogeneous, then maybe. A pre-biotic might also be good to restore the gut flora that went wonky from his avocado episode. Too much inulin can cause gas and bloating....again, we don't need to inflate the boy anymore than he already is.

I wanted to try banana, but my organic bananas aren't ripe. I just baked some more sweet potato and some butternut squash. I picked up Annabel Karmel's http://www.annabelkarmel.com/ books from the library, and she reccomends the root veggies cause they are the least allergenic, naturally sweet and easy to digest. Maybe I'll stick with the root veggies for a while; Carrots, Squash, Sweet Potato, Yams, Potato and Parsnip.

In the beginning, cereal failures and sweet potato success...

The WHO/UNICEF recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months of infancy.

http://www.unicef.org/nutrition/index_breastfeeding.html

I interpreted this recommendation very literally, and waited until May 8th, Charlie's six-month birthday, to give him his first taste of solid food. In preparation for this exciting event, I set up the high chair and purchased a silicone baby spoon from Diaper Eez in Bloor West Village.

I started by feeding him filtered water on a spoon, my rationale being that if he was familiar with the environment and tools of eating solids, when I switched from water to food the transition would be smooth. As with most of the assumptions I've made in Charlie's infancy, I was quickly proven wrong. The transition to solids has been anything but smooth.

Most Canadian experts, along with Toronto Public Health and the Ontario Early Years Centres, recommend starting with rice cereal, testing for allergenicity for 3-5 days, then on to oatmeal and barley.

I purchased My Organic Baby brown rice cereal from Loblaws (as did most of my mommy friends) and proceeded to mix it with filtered water to a thin breast milk-like consistency. The rice cereal is pre-cooked, then dried and fortified with iron and vitamins. I'll post more on fortification later. Like almost everything else in Babyland, depending on which expert you listen to, iron fortification could be either helpful or harmful.

The first few times I put the rice cereal in his mouth, he was very excited, opening up wide, arms outstretched reaching for more. After his second and third feeding, he wasn't into it. He'd turn his head and spit it out by blowing raspberries. He did not want to swallow the stuff, and quite frankly, I couldn't blame him. Because the cereal was whole grain, the fats had started to oxidize. I could smell the characteristic 'cardboard' odour of rancidity I'd grown to despise after so many years in the processed food industry.

I made a mad dash to purchase another brand of organic baby cereal: Healthy Timez' organic barley. Then I tried My Organic Baby oatmeal. He spat it all out, then cried.

I approached Charlie's disinterest in solids like all the other unique challenges he has thrown my way the past 6 months: I researched the Internet and combed the library for alternative solutions. I came across a website http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/ that advised starting on sweet potato or avocado.

I went to the Dufferin Grove Farmers' Market last Thursday http://dufferinpark.ca/market/wiki/wiki.php to stock up on local organic produce. That night I peeled, steamed and pureed sweet potato then froze it into ice cubes.

The next morning, I defrosted two cubes for 2 minutes in the microwave and crossed my fingers. All I did was place a little dab of food on Charlie's lips and he started to cry. I was perplexed. Was it too hot or too cold? Was it too thick or too thin? The more I varied the temperature and thickness, the more he cried.

I gave him his sippy cup and ate the puree myself. The flavour was amazing, but the texture was too gluey for my taste. Then a light bulb went off! Why would I even consider feeding Charlie something that I wouldn't like to eat myself? In culinary school and when developing products, I would never dream of putting a starchy veg in a blender/food processor. The best mashed root veg come from potato ricers or food mills. So, I piled Charlie in the stroller and set off for Fiesta Farms to gather more organic produce, and then on to Nella Cucina http://www.nellacucina.ca/.

At Nella, I selected an OXO Good Grips Food Mill http://salesrepstore.oxo.com/OA_HTML/xxoxo_ibeCCtpOXOPrdDtl.jsp?a=b&item=51782(also called a mouli in France) for about $60, thanks to excellent help from the sales staff. Back at home, I repeated the same preparation process for the sweet potato, this time using Toronto tap water.

At our six-month checkup, the doctor advised us to use tap water for the fluoride. I was raised on Toronto tap water, and actually prefer it to bottled, but after concerns about metal leaching from our old pipes, I thought filtered might be better for him. I'm still up in the air about which is better, tap or filtered? Maybe I'll post more on that later.

I processed the sweet potato using the smallest grind plate on the Food Mill and thinned it down to a cross between tomato juice and apple sauce in consistency.

The most amazing thing happened when Charlie tried the slightly pulpy, yet juicy sweet potato. He grabbed the spoon and proceeded to suck the sweet potato while making mmmmmmm noises. He ate 2 full ice cubes!

I felt rather pleased with myself for solving my first baby food science conundrum with only two test batches . I look forward to the culinary challenges coming my way in making baby food that Charlie will enjoy.

Next up....Avocado.