Cooking Spree

It.was exactly one month ago when I first relented and made my own baby food for Sierra. She likes the broccoli. The beans and eggplant aren't a favourite but I disguise them by mixing them with food she likes. All the fruit combo's are a hit and she loves the cereal (oats, barley and brown rice). The only bought food Sierra's been eating is the meat mixtures.

The last time I ventured to Superstore to stock up I was dismayed to see that their Organic baby food has gone up to $0.57 a jar. Sneaky marketing! Make the price nice and low and get babies addicted to the authentic tasting organic food and then raise the price hoping that mom's will continue to buy it. Not this mom! Since I refuse to buy the non-organic because it tastes like cardboard my only option is to make it.

Make it I did today:

1. Two ice-cube trays of cereal

2. (starting left) 1 large jar of peas, chicken and pasta

3. 2 small and 1 large jars of peas

4. 3 small jars of broccoli

5. 4 small jars of apple/banana (apple sauce I made last summer)

6. 1 large jar of apple/kiwi

7. 1 small jar of apple/banana/kiwi

8. 3 small and 1 large jars of blueberry/apple/banana

9. 2 not full jars of peas and chicken and a tiny bit of broccoli (I ran out of small jars by this point)

It took me almost 3 hours, and I ended up with a huge mess but this will last Sierra quite awhile and our pocket book will like it. I'm going to cook up some other meat, yams, and carrots soon too. I even had fun doing it - maybe it was the good sleep last night and the two cups of coffee this morning!

Baby Gourmet

I relented. I decided that I should make baby food for Sierra. This decision came from the fact that the food that is available for her stage (the earlier stages are too runny by now) in the organic PC is orange: carrots with peas and beans, squash, and sweet potatoes. Sierra has also been eating meat for about two weeks and those, too, are orange concoctions: turkey with sweet potatoes, chicken and vegetables (carrots and peas) beef and vegetables. Orange is good but my darling baby's skin is developing a faint orange hue. She gets fruit as well (which is mostly not orange) but the variety for that is also dwindling. Since I try to feed Sierra a mix of fruit and veggies there is always something orange in her bowl. If I were Sierra I'd be getting bored of my menu options, hence the cook off by her sympathetic parents.
This afteroon Trevor and I cooked up a baby smorg: green beans, broccoli, eggplant, avacado and apple sauce, banana and apple sauce, and blueberries and apple sauce. We made tons of apple sauce this past summer for this reason alone and now I'm finally using it! By the weekend the pears should be ripe so we'll mush those up. I also want whip up some mashed peas and cook up and shred some meat. Oh and I also ground up some oatmeal, barley and brown rice for cereal, I clued in to the fact that it will be way cheaper than buying those small boxes. Duh. Fun stuff. Not really. It made a huge mess and I won't say that it was easy. Maybe we did too many things at once? Sierra will eat well anyway - assuming she even likes it!

Baby Food

This past summer we planted a large vegetable garden and a major part of our harvest was carrots. We do not have a cold room so they are being stored at my parents' house. At this time of year the carrots are starting to sprout and wilt and need to be used. A large bag of them was taking up too much space in my fridge and this evening while supper was cooking I had the grand idea of peeling them and making them into baby food. Many of the carrots were small so peeling ended up being a bigger chore than I anticipated. I only chopped up a small pot full thinking I'd start with that and see how it went. After they were boiled I mashed them(carrots don't mash very well) and then I pureed in the blender (which didn't go so easily either) and ended up with 1 cup of baby worthy carrots and a big mess. I decided that paying $0.44 a jar for pre-made baby food from Superstore is more than worth it for me!

Rumbling

What would possess someone to think of boiling together corn syrup and sugar for 45 minutes and then pour it all over tons of pop corn and mold that mess into balls? Say they had a moment of craziness and did this than why on earth would they think anyone else would want to do this? Or why would they ever do it again? Someone obviously did this because there are still popcorn balls in the world today - in fact we now have a box of them.
I remember as a kid and even as an adult going to my Aunt Maggie and Uncle Walter's farm around Christmas and there always being a big bowl of homemade popcorn balls and I loved them! This year I had the grand idea that Trevor and I should make them ourselves. It took 45 minutes for the syrup to reach the right consistency and then we poured it all over the 40 cups of popcorn. This was the easy part. The part that resulted in an enormous mess and swearing and vows never to do this again was forming the balls. The syrup is hot and it is sticky and if you don't start forming the balls almost immediately than it hardens too much. Well that burns. We also had to slime our hands up with butter so they didn't become popcorn balls themselves. As the syrup hardened we had to scrape the bottom of the pan to get the bottom stuff and then the spatulas would stick and then jerk forward and popcorn went flying. It really didn't take long but the kitchen was an explosion of popcorn and everything was sticky. They taste good but no matter what we are NEVER doing this again. I'll just go visit my Aunt Maggie.