Adventures in Baby-Feeding!

Anyone get that movie reference?  Anyone?  Alrighty then....well, as the title of the post indicates, we have officially started solid foods at our house.  My four and a half month old son has taken fairly well to moving from an all liquid diet to a diet that includes a couple of tablespoons of some kind of solid food on a daily basis.  As with our other children,  we started the baby off with a semi-liquid rice cereal (organic brown rice cereal) that he mostly spit out onto his bib - which is typical.  We fed him the cereal for four days, gradually thickening the consistency.  I can't say that he had any particular opinions (as far as infant opinions go).  I mean, would you have any strong opinions on what amounts to a pasty gruel?  Nope, I didn't think so. 

Anyway, things started to get slightly more interesting when I purchased several different packets of organic fruits and vegetables at my local grocery store.  I was a little disappointed with the selection there, but I figured that he didn't need a huge variety to begin with anyway.  I chose organic roasted apples by Sprout, a baby food company apparently co-founded by TV chef Tyler Florence.  I am not really sure why the apples needed to be roasted, but Mr. Florence seems to prefer that method of cooking baby food.  It definitely deepens the color of the pureed fruit, but I would kind of beg to differ that it enhances the "natural sweetness" of the apples.  Those suckers must have been some kind of tart when they were roasted and pureed because the final product was pretty sour.  I didn't taste them before I started spooning them into my son's mouth, so I was kind of surprised when he made a face after the first spoonful.  He continued eating them, so he must not have been completely put off by the flavor.

Our next adventure was with roasted butternut squash, also by Sprout.  This went over substantially better with the baby - he actually started opening his mouth in anticipation of the next bite of squash!  I can understand the roasting method here - the squash would have to be cooked somehow.  The flavor, in my opinion, was fairly mild, but my son seemed to really enjoy it (especially when mixed with a little rice cereal).

Since our baby food packet supply was being rapidly depleted, and since I happened to be at one of my favorite stores - Target - I decided to see if that store had anything else by way of different baby food to try.  I was so excited to see that Gerber's organic line was more complete at this store.  They had peas and prunes in the first foods, which I was pleased to see, especially because my grocery store did not have any first foods in that particular brand.  I picked up a couple of packages and was really excited to try peas with my son.  The packages sat in our pantry for a couple of days and the day that I deemed him ready to try peas, I happened to pick up the package to take a closer look at it.  The label on the front touted "now with DHA!", so I thought, "huh, I wonder if those have a higher protein content than the other brand's veggies".  I flipped it over to check the nutrition label, happened to read the ingredients and discovered that the DHA comes from adding tuna oil to the baby food.  I have two problems with this: first and foremost, we have a family history of severe anaphylactic-type allergies to fish, shellfish and nut products.  I always read ingredient labels and have always been extremely careful when it comes to feeding these potential allergens to my babies.  Obviously, he would not be able to eat the products with the tuna oil in them.  Which is ALL of Gerber's organic baby food line - even down to the fruits!  That is my second problem: adding tuna oil to fruits just offends my chef sensibilities.  Seriously.....I don't want to eat a peach cobbler studded with tuna fish, why the hell would my baby want to eat a pureed version of the same thing?!  Back to the allergen thing and more to the point: Gerber did not even have a warning label on the food, indicating that it contained fish products.  That just pissed me off. 

So, long story....long?.....I will be writing a letter to Gerber to complain about the stupid DHA.  I will also be making my own organic peas (sans tuna oil, of course).  Making my own organic baby food got me thinking about other things....like switching to cloth diapers instead of the disposables that my son rapidly outgrows.  That is a totally different blog though.  Right now, we have just mastered Sprout's Roasted Pear baby food.  Oddly enough, he did not enjoy that one very much either.  I will have to try to find another brand of fruit baby food for him to try because he may just not care for Tyler Florence's riff on fruit puree.  I don't know.  (Again, I tasted it - this time, it was less tart than the apples, but really didn't have much pear flavor.  Geez....this makes me think that I may be getting myself in for making more than just baby peas here.)  Until next time, baby (and grown up) food lovers!