Becoming Me: Cooking Baby Food

Okay, most of you know that cooking is not a talent of mine...eating on the other hand? I excel at that and I'm lucky to be married to someone who loves to cook. Part of the problem with cooking is that for the longest time I hated it. What was the point? It takes too long in proportion to the amount of time it takes to eat and then I have a huge mess to clean up. Why take all that time when I could pour a bowl of cereal, heat up a can of soup, or head out to a restaurant with some friends? In fact, there have been many times that I grumble and refuse to clean up a messy kitchen after Chris cooks an amazing meal. I didn't ask him to cook. Sure, I enjoyed it, but I could have had a bowl of raisin bran with a banana and washed one bowl. And as it usually works in life when you don't like to do something, you usually do it badly. I remember being 9 or 10 and putting cookies in the oven. My dad walked in and said "ewww...what smells like burnt pretzels?!" I had poured 1/4 cup of salt instead of 1/4 tsp. Fast forward to last June. I decided to cook waffles for breakfast, using bisquick, mind you. Well, at some point while gathering the 3 ingredients, I turned the box and started reading the biscuit recipe. Chris tasted the waffle shaped biscuit and said "hmmm, I could make sausage gravy and we'd have a new breakfast food." I cried and threw it out (blame pregnancy hormones). So here's the ironic thing...I'm addicted to the Food Network. How does that fit into my hatred of cooking? I'll spend hours watching Rachel Ray marathons but the thought of actually making something makes me squirm?

Well, in the past few weeks I've been making baby food for Penelope and I'm really enjoying it, even though it takes time! My mom always talks about how she made us baby food, but back then you couldn't find baby food without added sugar or salt. Then recently I've found many friends who cook their own baby food and said it is so easy. I've had lots of people ask me what is wrong with Gerber...and there really isn't anything wrong with it...it's kind of like smart ones/lean cuisine meals for babies, right? It's fast and convenient, which is usually my kind of food preparation. But there is something that feels so good about buying a bunch of fresh fruit and veggies, cooking them and watching Penny enjoy them. I never understood that about Chris. He always finds more enjoyment from the actual cooking and serving the food to me and our friends/family then if he actually likes it.

So I'm starting off with baby steps in cooking...real baby steps! Does it count as cooking if all I did was steam carrots and puree? Probably not so much, but the past week I've made more intricate meals including Penny's first "Beef stew" which consisted of carrots, sweet potatoes, parsnip, parsley, garlic, chicken stock and beef all pureed together. It smelled so good Chris and I ate some. Then today I made a pea, leek, potato puree...also very yummy. Plus, Chris and I are trying foods we've never tasted, like papaya. All 3 of us loved that! Our freezer is full of various baby foods. We freeze it in ice cube trays and then pop out 2 to microwave at each meal. Since 4 carrots fill up 2 ice cube trays it is quite the deal in cost too!
So anyways, that's my Becoming Me post for this week. I'm starting to see why Chris finds a cutting board full of fresh veggies to chop up can be fun and relaxing. I'm off to pick up my mom from the airport. Yay!