Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Silly Rabbit, Carrots are for Babies...Or Not...

We have officially entered the world of solid foods!  After Addy's great experience with rice cereal, I was fully expecting the other new foods to go just as well - met with a wide open mouth and a smile. Just to be sure, I thought we'd start with carrots. They are sweet and I think they are super yummy.  A veggie that even Matt likes. Slam dunk right?

So wrong!  She hated them.  With a passion.  It was hilarious to watch the sour expressions on my baby's sweet face. A whole new set of emotions and expressions came out that we have never seen before.  Again I find myself wondering if I'm a horrible mother because I laugh at my daughter when she is unhappy.  But holly crap, when that tiny face scrunches up and gives you that look, how can you resist (see picture below for proof)?

But the good news is that I think my first attempt at making my own baby food was a success. I just steamed some carrots on the stove until they were soft and tossed them in the food processor. I added some of the residual water from the pot to get the right consistency.  I ended up kept two servings and froze the rest in ice cube trays for later.  It really didn't take much time, and I think the four or so carrots made about the equivalent of twelve servings. And I got to blow the dust off my food processor. So double bonus.


Tuesday, November 22, 2011

My First Acorn Squash

I’m always seeing those beautiful squashes at the grocery this time of year and never know what to do with them.  Or if I would like them.  But as I look at my daughters list of stage 1 food that we are about to embark upon, squash is on there.  And I can’t ask her to try stuff I haven’t tried, right? 

So I came across a recipe from Whole Foods for acorn squash with cranberry apple quinoa, and thought I would audition it for Thanksgiving.  I actually saw it on their iPad app, which is really nice; you can look for just recipes that are gluten free.

It actually turned out super yummy!  I think I over cooked the quinoa a bit (and I only used regular old quinoa, not red), but it still worked well as a stuffing in the squash.  There are also a lot of steps, so this one was not something that can be easily accomplished during a nap.  Thankfully Matt was on Addy duty while I cooked.

I’m still not sure how much I liked the squash itself.  I really love quinoa in general; it is one of the things I've discovered since going gluten free that I would have never tried before.  But I think if you stuffed the quinoa mixture from this recipe into a bucket of sand, the sand would suddenly not taste so bad.  It was honestly almost like a dessert.  Matt doesn’t like anything too exotic when it comes to veggies, and he scarfed this down, so I say it was a success.

As for the big fail, I served it with baked pork, which was seriously the driest meat I have made in a long time.  Also totally unnecessary - half an acorn squash with the hearty quinoa could have stood alone as a main course for dinner.

As it turns out, there are enough sides already planned for Thanksgiving, so I will just be keeping this one in my back pocket for another time.   But yay me for trying it.

The star of the show, the acorn squash and quinoa stuffing.  Boy that pork looks prettier than it tasted.  lol

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Better Late Than Never?

So, typical me.  Here I am, thinking that something would be a fun idea about five years after everyone else has done it, gotten good at it, and is now over it and on to the next thing.  But since I’ve become a stay at home mom, I discovered blogs (okay, let’s be honest, it’s really been since I found Pinterest… damn that sight is addicting…), and thought it might be an interesting thing to try out myself.  Not so much that other people will read my blog, but more that it might be a fun way to express myself, do some writing, and just keep track of all my experiments, which mostly fall into the realm of one of the following:

(1) Food experiments.  Being a celiac, there are lots of trials and errors here, whether it be cooking, eating out, or trying new products.  So maybe someone will learn something, not make the same mistakes, or find something new that looks yummy.  Even if you’re not gluten free, the diet has opened up a whole new world of food that my previous, picky self would have turned up my nose at.

(2) Crafty experiments.  I like being crafty.  Whether it is for a gift or something in the house, I’ve found myself getting back to being more creative since I left the land of gray cubes and fluorescent lights.

(3)  Life experiments.  Being a first-time mom, I’m sure there will be some experiments in raising my little bean, Adalyn.  Hopefully these will turn out better than the food and crafty ones, but let’s be honest, we all like reading about other people’s trials and errors in this arena!

So we’ll see if this ends up being something that I stick with or something that ends up collecting dust like some of my half-started projects in the basement.  Anyone want to make a wager?