Tasty

So, I haven't posted anything about baby food because several of you have posted about how easy and how much BETTER (healthier and cheaper) it is to make your own. I have STOLEN artlessly from you, thankyouverymuch, and as such haven't had much to add to the overall body of blog posts on homemade baby food.

Until today.

So I've been toying around with different oatmeal concoctions, trying to get the consistency just right. My main issue with baby food is that most of it is inedible. I am a picky girl--I admit it. I'll eat most anything (except food with a face--if it has a face in its original form, count me out) but it has to be GOOD. DECENT. EDIBLE. And so in creating variations of the Boy's standard favorites, I experiment with different textures and flavors.

Which brings me back to oatmeal. We buy the boxes of organic cereal for him--I use it as a thickener for fruits and yogurts because it is the very definition of tasteless paste on its own. But for real cereal that I want him to...oh...EAT, I buy whole rolled oats and grind them up to different textures in my blender.

I've tried different liquids for cooking (water, formula, juice) but none of them produced anything good, so I scrapped it and started using the fruits that I blended for him. We've started adding back texture to his food so they're a bit thicker and have some small chunks of apples, peaches, pears and blueberries in them.

Here's the ratio that works best:

4 tablespoons of ground oatmeal
8 tablespoons of blended fruit

There's enough liquid in the fruit to fully cook the oatmeal and it creates a lovely texture. So this morning for breakfast the Boy had oatmeal cooked in 8 tablespoons of a blueberry-peach combination. I added a tablespoon of whole milk ricotta cheese to add creaminess and a bit of protein and a sprinkling of cinnamon and lo, he INHALED it.

Here's the proof:




Edited to add: It's 3:20 in the afternoon. Hey, did you know that peaches, blueberries and oatmeal have a lot of fiber? Yeah. That was interesting.