Cream peas...hmmm

We got some lovely cream peas at the Farmer's Market yesterday and John made some of them into baby food for JJ.  He wasn't exactly enthusiastic, but he didn't hate them either, so I'm considering that a "win."  We want to get more fats and protiens in his solids diet so we can transition him completely off of formula so he's only on breast milk and solids.  As it is, he get about 8-16oz of formula a day in addition to all the breast milk I can pump (when I'm working) plus nursing.  It's been a real struggle to keep his weight gain up - he seems to need more fat than he's getting from the breastmilk.  I suspect the issue is that I'm working - as a result, there are at least 3 days a week we're not working on keeping the production levels high, and the pumping doesn't do a great job of draining the good fats, unless I have him nurse first.  Who knew breastfeeding was such a tricky process?!?!

Sweeeeeeet Potatoes

First taste of veggies today - sweet potato! Well, technically, a yam, but either way, JJ was loving it and has the spoon thing down pat.

We decided to make our own baby food, so we had to do a bit more with this one (bananas are just mashable) To prepare it, John baked the yam, pureed it with some water, and froze all the extra in ice cube trays for later. Pretty cool (no brown sugar or marshmellows, before you ask ;)). He made some bannana cubes too so we're starting to get a stock of baby food laid by.

Why make our own baby food? Good question. Our reasons are:

• Cost - baby food is largely water. It is way cheaper to by an extra fruit/veggie/etc., cook it with our own meal without spices/salt, and run it through the blender, than to pay someone else to give us 1/8 as much food for 5 times the price.
• Contents - no preservatives or any fillers in homemade food. We know exactly what is in it.
• Organic - we want to minimize his pesticide exposure at this age.
• Environment - sure the little jars are cute, but that's extra packaging that has to be recycled or buried.

It's really easy for us since we a) love cooking and b)have a chest freezer. For recipes, we've got Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron (pretty good, but she tends to mix opinion and research rather freely - a chronic baby book issue), and I want to get William's Sonoma's Cooking for Baby cookbook - but then, I have a slight addiction to cookbooks...