On Eating
Happy 9 month birthday to Lucas. Nine months ago we were celebrating the New Year and a new baby. Now, we marvel at his ability to crawl, and how he has memorized the path the dog's water dish. Take a bath in the duck tub and in the dog's dish. Lovely.
Now that the boy is 9 months old, we can begin a slow transition to table foods. Yeah, right. This is going to be painful, as he DOES NOT LIKE the jarred chunky stuff. I'm sorry, but baby food is disgusting. Perhaps it goes to show how degraded our own adult tastebuds have become due to years of exposure to salt, sugar, and their evil counterparts: monosodium glutamate and high fructose corn syrup. Some days I can be a culinary snob and demand organic shade grown chocolate that is 73% cacao. Other days I am ready to stick my face in box of Captain Crunch. Yeah, that's right, and if it is peanut butter Captain Crunch, then all the better.
Today, for example, I opened a jar of garden chicken pasta dinner. It smelled pretty good, and it even looked marginally appetizing, but the taste. My lord, the taste was like watery, chickeny, carroty water. It needed salt...and Tabasco. And the little nodules of pasta reminded me of my scarred childhood when I was eating a certain brand of soup that comes in a red and white can. The soup was beef and barley, and my mother teased me that the barley kernels, all swollen from their bath in monosodium glutamate beef water, were bugs. "Ewww," she said," You're eating bugs!" I looked into this jar of food and my first thought was, "I am feeding Lucas bugs today. Well, here we go, open up for me lil' buddy!"
Lucas did not cotton to his pasta dinner. In fact, blood curdling screaming coupled with visceral gagging is probably a better description. He would swallow the goo, but the little pasta nodules would fall to the front of his mouth, making him look like he had four molars growing from the front of his gums. Not an attractive moment for a child who takes cherubic photos. So, I caved to prevent another child from being scarred with a scary food association, and I switched to pureed fruit, which he greedily ate. He finished his dinner with a teething cookie that was gummed to the softness of wet cardboard and then dropped on the floor for the dog to polish off. By that time, it was time for my own dinner, so I balanced Lucas on my lap while I ate my chicken and pasta. Lucas has long held a fascination with whatever Aaron and I are eating, so I broke off a tiny strand of spaghetti and put it in his mouth.
And he ate.
Not only did he gum and swallow spaghetti, he ate onion and mushrooms and kept trying to stick his paws in my dish to feed himself. The spaghetti he held in his fat little fist didn't quite make it to his mouth, but he did rather enjoy the rest of my meal, and even tried a bit of melted cheese on flatbread. Any suggestions for the 54 bottles of baby food I have in my pantry?
Now that the boy is 9 months old, we can begin a slow transition to table foods. Yeah, right. This is going to be painful, as he DOES NOT LIKE the jarred chunky stuff. I'm sorry, but baby food is disgusting. Perhaps it goes to show how degraded our own adult tastebuds have become due to years of exposure to salt, sugar, and their evil counterparts: monosodium glutamate and high fructose corn syrup. Some days I can be a culinary snob and demand organic shade grown chocolate that is 73% cacao. Other days I am ready to stick my face in box of Captain Crunch. Yeah, that's right, and if it is peanut butter Captain Crunch, then all the better.
Today, for example, I opened a jar of garden chicken pasta dinner. It smelled pretty good, and it even looked marginally appetizing, but the taste. My lord, the taste was like watery, chickeny, carroty water. It needed salt...and Tabasco. And the little nodules of pasta reminded me of my scarred childhood when I was eating a certain brand of soup that comes in a red and white can. The soup was beef and barley, and my mother teased me that the barley kernels, all swollen from their bath in monosodium glutamate beef water, were bugs. "Ewww," she said," You're eating bugs!" I looked into this jar of food and my first thought was, "I am feeding Lucas bugs today. Well, here we go, open up for me lil' buddy!"
Lucas did not cotton to his pasta dinner. In fact, blood curdling screaming coupled with visceral gagging is probably a better description. He would swallow the goo, but the little pasta nodules would fall to the front of his mouth, making him look like he had four molars growing from the front of his gums. Not an attractive moment for a child who takes cherubic photos. So, I caved to prevent another child from being scarred with a scary food association, and I switched to pureed fruit, which he greedily ate. He finished his dinner with a teething cookie that was gummed to the softness of wet cardboard and then dropped on the floor for the dog to polish off. By that time, it was time for my own dinner, so I balanced Lucas on my lap while I ate my chicken and pasta. Lucas has long held a fascination with whatever Aaron and I are eating, so I broke off a tiny strand of spaghetti and put it in his mouth.
And he ate.
Not only did he gum and swallow spaghetti, he ate onion and mushrooms and kept trying to stick his paws in my dish to feed himself. The spaghetti he held in his fat little fist didn't quite make it to his mouth, but he did rather enjoy the rest of my meal, and even tried a bit of melted cheese on flatbread. Any suggestions for the 54 bottles of baby food I have in my pantry?
posted by pastorschick at
7:53 PM
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