Eat Like a Baby Part I, Or How Our Baby Made Us Into Vegetarians

It is true. Change came from within.

So I have this baby. He is now a toddler. And he is very good. But he does not like meat.

When I serve it to him, he wrinkles his nose, and pokes at it and then jettisons it off the side of the tray. Fine. Not uncommon in babies and children. The doc says just keep trying it when we can.

So of course I focused on making sure he was getting a very balanced diet otherwise, all whole foods: fruits, vegetables, grains and plenty of dairy for the protein. He eats very well. He makes merry as he feasts.

Then it occurred to me: isn't this the way we are all supposed to eat? Meat or no, Americans are notorious for treating potatoes like the cardinal vegetable, salt like the only seasoning ever invented and fat like, well, candy. (I apologize. Fatcandy is troubling indeed.) So I decided that we would eat like our baby. I would try removing what little meat we were already consuming and focus on trying, instead of just one or two simple vegetables, to eat a larger variety of vegetables in each dish, and to make a more varied selection of grains and start adding beans and peas to our diet.

Gentle reader - I have had the Most Fun Ever. This is one of the most fun and rewarding cooking projects I've ever undertaken and it has lead us to some very new places philosophically as well as nutritionally. But more in that in Part II. This is about the nuts and bolts of the changeover.

The first thing that really helped, apart from warning my husband what was about to happen, was to receive his support in the form of the gift of Deborah Madison's gorgeous and encyclopedic cookbook Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. What a wonderful book. I started with her chapters on dried beans since these would be cheap and nourishing and totally new for me. I was always a big fan of canned chickpeas, cannellinis, and so forth but I figured I could more cheaply and healthily (and fun-ly) make our own.

We went to the local organic-ish market and got a bunch of dried bulk things: chickpeas, pinto beans (which I was not usually a fan of), cannellinis, red and green French lentils, black (turtle) beans, short grain brown rice (which we love and is much more affordable in bulk anyway).

That weekend, I decided to make a spicy pinto beans in broth with cornbread. At night, after the baby was in bed, I measured out and sorted through the beans. This has turned out to be one of my favorite parts of cooking dried beans. I had not given attention to beans before; they're surprisingly lovely, little painted stones, and patiently looking through the handfuls for the odd inedible ort or blighted bean was more like a craft than cooking. I sorted them into a heavy ceramic bowl, filled it with water and left them to soak until the next afternoon.

We ended up with a brothy bowl of spicy, earthy beans that were totally unlike the pintos beans found in childhood school chili and we lapped them up with hunks of hot buttermilk cornbread. From there, I went on to chickpeas, which were not only delicious in there own right but the chickpea broth turned out to be a great stock and improved the various soups I used it in. And while the homemade black beans were far better than the canned, Madison also tipped me off to using the broth from those to make an amazing black rice using basmati, chopped tomatoes and sauteed onions. This we ate with stewed black-eyed peas made tender with the Lousiana "holy trinity" of onions, green bell pepper and celery, and herbs.

Since then, I've gone on to explore brown rice further as a main dish; we tried Wehani, a nutty fragrant long grain whole rice wholly unlike basmati; we've returned to whole wheat and Israeli couscous; made an amazing ginger stew from French lentils. But we've hardly scratched the surface of things I want to try.

The only big fail has been toasted buckwheat kasha. We tried it one night with a vegetable curry. It smelled a little odd to both of us, but naturally no one said anything. It turned out to have the oddest flavor and we ended up sheepishly scraping it off of our curry to try to finish dinner. We were both relieved at the mutual confession that we didn't like it. We decided that since I had got it in a box at the grocery store, it likely was a bit rancid. But when faced with the fresh stuff in bulk the next weekend, well. We passed it by. We might try it again in a few months, but for now the memory of the rancid version lingers unhappily.

Now I must admit that Mr Tumnus, our child, doesn't eat of everything I cook - some of it is still too highly flavored for a 15-monther; children take time to be able to sort out lots of flavors and are easily overwhelmed by complex dishes. But he eats very healthily and grows strong on our diet. And my husband and I are lighter and brighter-eyed for it all.

This week I'm planning to bake eggs on top of stewed mushrooms, make a ricotta pie with braised Swiss chard, stew lentils and potatoes with a spicy topping, steam asparagus with a Korean dressing and top with fried polenta. And a few other things I've forgotten. I make a menu for the whole week and Tum and I do the grocery shopping on Mondays and every day my husband says he looks forward with great anticipation to see what's cooking when he gets home. I look forward to it to. What will I make next week? I'm already thinking about dal with the thickest part of coconut milk stirred in, our favorite brown rice and red lentil soup, maybe spicy black bean cakes.

And just wait until our Farmer's Market reopens!

Babyfood Pie

Now that I've totally revolted you, let me explain.

Baby food, in my opinion, should be of the freshest, best sorts of food there are. I'm making mine these days since I have the luxury of time and my baby eats such simple foods. I buy organic produce and steam or roast it, or just mash it up raw. What could be better? I figure that since I have no desire to eat mush out of a jar, I probably shouldn't feed it to me baby. I'm sure it's better than I think it is, but why pass up the opportunity to get us all used to Mr Tumnus eating what we eat?

So this morning, I got out some sweet potato I had roasted last night and approached Tum with it. Granted, he had had some for dinner the night before. Ho hum. So I got out some banana and mashed it in there, too. He took his usual first judicious taste (he likes to understand what he's eating before taking bit bites) and then immediately opened his baby-bird mouth for more! Always a delightful sight.

I thought I'd try it myself. I tried the rice cereal that most babies start on and thought it was vile. So I switched him to whole-grain baby oatmeal that actually tasted like food - lesson learned. Do not feed baby anything you wouldn't eat. (Note: Yo Baby yogurt is delicious and very dangerous for a parent since it's full-fat milk!)

As you might guess, the combination of two were delicious! Because the potato had been roasted, it had a very dark flavor, strong but very sweet - more like molasses than table sugar. The banana had all the bright, tropical fragrance and melting sweetness you'd expect. Together, they were fabulous!

The baby ate two bowlsful and was full of energy and cheer thereafter. Success!

I got to thinking while he was playing, that this combo must surely be a popular one - and one that I should turn into a pie! I Googled recipes for it and saw some nice ones, but nothing like what I was thinking of.

When the fall rolls around, and I'm not distracted by berries and stone fruits currently begging to be en-pied, I'm going to:

1. start with a graham cracker crust.
2. roast several garnet sweet potatoes until they are as tender as possible.
3. once I've mashed the potatoes up, I'm going to start adding bananas one-half at a time. I don't want people to say, "Good Lord! BANANA!" I want them to get a complex mouthful of many kinds of sweet and smokey flavors.
4. once I have those proportions correct, I'll use brown sugar and a small amount of cane sugar for the added sweetener (which you need in a pie!)
5. vanilla, fresh nutmeg (my obsession), Vietnamese cinnamon.
6. I could debate adding: cloves or allspice. The first may be too strong and the latter too "dusty." Also, I could be wild and add cardamon if I wanted to really make an exotic and more tropical kind of pie.
7. thicken with eggs and cream - I'm going to avoid evaporated milk, which is too like pumpkin pie. I want a lighter filling, I think.

Should there be a topping? I tend not to do such, but who knows. I might feel like it. There could be an argument for drizzled bittersweet chocolate. Toasted nuts (pecans or hazelnuts could nice) or even pralines would add a traditional element of crunch. Of course I would serve it with fresh whipped cream.

So there is the project. I will post again when I get to it! Fall seems so far away as we get into the heights and delights of summer, but now I have a pie to look forward to - and something new for the Thanksgiving table!

The Night Kitchen is open

So it's difficult to cook with an infant, as I've observed before.

He plays happily in his excersaucer for a bit, but as soon as I start chopping an onion, or chicken, or some other noxious, poisonous thing (I'm convinced that various germs live on horribly despite my Silkwood shower hand washing and will contaminate my sweet babe), he needs me. So I've taken to cooking dinners (and baby food!) at night while my husband is putting the baby to bed.

It's actually a pleasure.

I clean up the kitchen from dinner (which is also a pleasure - having a clean, neat kitchen puts me at ease). Then I decide which baby foods I need to make and which dinners I want to start.

Tonight, I made an easy almost all-pantry meal that my friend Ashtanga taught me. I poured myself a glass of wine, and got out some organic chicken sausage and sauteed it. I took it out of the pan and sauteed a chopped onion in some olive oil. Then I returned the sausage to the pan and added two 14 oz cans of diced tomatoes and some dried basil and let it simmer. Tomorrow, about an hour before my husband gets home from work, I'll split and roast a spaghetti squash and the reheat the sauce to have on top of it. Easy! This is the beauty of the Night Kitchen - the dishes I make are usually much better the second day and are a snap to reheat.

While I made the sauce, I roasted a sweet potato for my baby. I pick up organic garnet sweet potatoes at our local Whole Foods knock-off (oh, Ho-Fo - how I miss thee!). I roast them, peel and mash them, allow them to cool and then freeze portions in plastic baggies, which then defrost over night. He loves them, these days.

Other nights, I've steamed organic apples and then run them through the mini-chopper. Later this week, I'll figure out pears, which he has never had! I thought about steaming them, as well, but decided to just wait until they get really ripe and tender.

It's really fun to return to my independent cooking ways at night and I always seem to find some energy in reserve for it. My husband says it delights him to see me cooking and smell the the good things - he finds it comforting.

Notes on Roasting Spaghetti Squash

Get a squash that looks healthy and is heavy for it's size. Preheat the oven to 400. Split the squash down its length, rub the split surfaces with olive oil and place, cut side down, on a baking tray. Roast 30 minutes and then pierce with a fork to check for doneness. You want the fork to go in with little resistance. Keep adding 10 minute increments if it needs more time.

I like this better than steaming - the squash will put out a lot of water and roasting helps reduce this. It also gives a sweetness to the squash, which you will then rake with a fork into spaghetti-like strings. Oh - pick up the squash with a pot holder and squeeze it over the sink for a minute to get out some of the water. Or allow it to drain in a colander if you can wait - I never can.

You can serve most pasta sauces on this (lighter ones are indeed better - and it loves fresh herbs and parmesan!). If you want a lighter and unusual change from pasta, try this.