Baby Food, the Rerun

Food equals love, or at least it does in my house. And probably yours, too. But especially mine, because I claim Italian descent, and we all know how Italians say, “I love you”...

With meatballs.

Anyway, I want to love my family with food. I want to make it healthy, and really, really satisfying. It’s not necessarily gourmet, but it sure is love. So when it was just two of us, I put a lot of love into our mealtime event. And now that it is three, I still want to put a lot of love there.

But see, baby food doesn’t exactly scream “love” to me. Pop open a jar, nuke for twenty seconds, feed. So since I have all these romantic notions about food, I commenced with the grand making of the baby food the second Dr. B told me Phoebe was ready for taters. 

And make I did. Carolynn and I even had a blitz fest with the food processors and we stocked our freezers. It brought great delight to my heart.

And then we ran out. Two weeks before Christmas.

So Gerber became my best friend. Because two weeks before Christmas, you don’t care how lovely jarred vegetable chicken dinner is. You just want to keep everybody happy and fed.

But with the New Year came a Resolution to get back on the baby food wagon. I needed to get the food processor out again, and fast.  Phoebe was tiring of ultra-soupy textures, and I was tiring of the grocery bill.  So Nandee graciously agreed to entertain at her house, and I was determined to get it done.

The Facts:

• Six consecutive hours in the kitchen
  
• All kitchen real estate occupied (and by all, I mean all -- stove, oven, counters, you name it)
  
• 10 ice cube trays filled, twice over
  
• At least 24 varieties of baby food
• A nasty set of dishpan hands

I even did the math, girls.  It hurt my brain a little bit, because I haven’t divided this added, multiplied, and divided this much since I had to figure out semester averages.  But the bottom line cost of homemade was over fifty percent cheaper than store bought.  Well worth the extra effort!