Adventures in Baby Food

So, my attempts to make Homemade Baby Barley Cereal were thwarted last night. I'd gone to the supermarket, purchased some barley, and brought it home intending to whirl it up in the Cuisinart, cook it in some water, and feed it to Andrew. No muss, no fuss.

Well, it turns out that my Cuisinart is not the right tool in which to grind grains. It's too big, and so the grains, which are ideally supposed to be pulverized into a powder, end up just taking a fun (and mighty loud) ride around the Cuisinart for 2 minutes. I was discouraged, but I vowed to try again.

Tonight, Mom brought over some organic pearled barley that she'd picked up at the health food store, along with some organic brown rice. We tried the new barley in the Cuisinart, still with no luck. After 5 minutes, there were still big hard kernels in the basket. I thought maybe I could cook it up and put it through the Cuisinart afterwards, but even after 10 minutes of cooking/stirring, the grains were still too hard for my baby (as a side note, they made a lovely porridge, which I did eat with maple syrup and milk).

Enter the Mr. Coffee grinder. This little beastie had been lurking in the back of my coffee cupboard for a few years (I buy coffee pre-ground), so I thought, "What the heck?" It worked beautifully. Presto! Powdered baby grains!

Unfortunately, Mom and I had so much fun pulverizing barley and brown rice that the thing shut down. I don't know if it just got too warm and turned itself off, or if the motor burned out completely -- I'll re-check it tomorrow. Too bad, though: It was exciting while it lasted.

Meanwhile, I baked 4 peaches, let them cool, and then we peeled and pitted them. We then let the Cuisinart do what it was designed to do: puree. It did a fine job. I ended up with 30 tablespoons of peach puree, 26 of which I froze in an ice cube tray (13 2-tablespoon cubes), and 4 T of which I put into a sealed dish for Andrew to try tomorrow night. I almost decided to send some to daycare with him tomorrow, but god forbid he hates it and ends up with nothing to eat at lunchtime. So it's jarred baby food at daycare tomorrow.

Note: Homemade peach baby food cost me 12 cents per tablespoon, and that's with no water added. Commercial baby food has water added, so I have to remember to factor that in when calculating the cost of homemade versus commercial. I guess I could thin out the peach puree before freezing it, but then I'd have to use two ice cube trays, and there's not that much room in my freezer. Much easier just to thin out the puree after thawing, as needed.

Tomorrow is his 6-month (and 3 week) checkup!

The vegetable container garden is really growing fast -- my cucumbers are about 2 inches tall, as are the bush beans, and yesterday I noticed a flower on one of the tomato plants -- one day, that will be a tomato. In fact, everything that I planted last week (was that really only 7 days ago???) is UP! I was so inspired that today I planted some gourds for fall decorations, plus some peppers. I also planted marigold seeds in and around all of the veggie pots, for color and to keep the bug population down. Theoretically. Anyway, soon I'll need to thin my seedlings and arrange for trellises for the cucumbers, squash, and other vine-y plants.

The last couple of nights, Andrew's been waking in the middle of the night -- in fact, he's making noise as I'm typing this. I think he may have teeth coming, but I don't feel any bumps anywhere. Still, if they're deep but trying to push their way down (or up), they're probably bothering him. Poor thing. I wish he could tell me what's bothering him. He's also got a cough, and he's been pulling on his ears -- again. Sigh; I guess I'll have them check his ears AGAIN tomorrow; let's hope it's "just" teething.