carrot and apricot puree

Call me a hippie, I don’t care. I make all my own baby food and I’m gosh darn proud of it. The baby “food” out of jars are disgusting, they smell bad, they taste bad, and are full of preservatives. Making your own baby food is easy, healthy, and CHEAP! Here is one of Olivia’s favorites – Carrot and apricot puree. I buy organic carrots from Costco, 10 lbs, I’m hardcore. The apricots are dried because they are not in season, a little bit of warm water will reconstitute them right back up. One of the reasons I bought apricot is because Olivia had some poopie issues – as most babies do when they first start solids. They are high in fiber and has the same effect as prunes, but much tastier.

For this recipe, I make the carrots and apricot separately. The carrots I will freeze into cubes (see below), and the apricot I will keep in a container in the fridge as “toppings”. Olivia will usually get a base food (carrots, green beans, butternut squash, parsnip) with a topping food (pear, apricot, blueberry).

I make baby food in batches and freeze as cubes. For her every day containers we bring to daycare, we use these OXO Baby Food Storage Tray in the 4oz size. We have a set in the 2oz size as well for yogurts and such. These containers are awesome, super durable, and doesn’t look baby-ish so you can repurpose them for salad dressing, snacks, whatever. These containers are also freezable so you might want to stock up and use them as freezer storage solution as well. They cost $10 per set, not a bad investment if you think about it. I also have a set of these Solids Cube Trays. They are a little bit more work, but you can store the individual 1-oz cubes in a ziplock bag for optimal storage. Another advantage of the 1-oz cubes is that you can mix and match flavors. Olivia likes 3 butternut squash cubes and 1 carrot cube, or 3 carrot cubes and 1 green bean cube… you get the idea.

You can also purchase some of the baby food makers out there – I have a Baby Brezza my bestie Jamie got for me – it’s great for tossing in vegetables as you are cooking, but the blender and freeze method is much better at making baby food in bulk.

It may seem like a lot of work, but if you do it in batches, it’s not that bad. For carrots you can buy “baby carrots” to make it even easier, but beware, some baby carrots contain food coloring and additives to make them more colorful. I always try to buy organic because root vegetables have the highest concentration of pesticides. I’m trying to keep the little one additive and pesticides free as long as possible.

You would too, right?

Yeah this is just too cute to not post. She’s done this once, and hasn’t done it again, must have been super tired that day. <3 <3

Breakfast is probably the best meal of the day, with the exception of Brunch, and maybe Dim Sum. I used to buy corned beef hash in the can, because it’s delicious, don’t judge me. I recently learned how to make it (and how easy it is), and it’s way more delicious than the stuff in the can. The only reason I make corned beef is so I can have hash. A bowl of salty boiled beef with vegetables isn’t the greatest if you think about it… what is up with the Irish and boiling meat anyway?

This is probably one of the easiest things to make… It takes a little bit of foresight (3 hours to boil a chunk of salty beef…), some knife-work, and voila, a nice steaming bowl of mediocre dinner. The magic happens the next morning – if following socially accepted norms such as eating breakfast during “breakfast time” is your thing. Here is my easy no-fuss corned beef hash, the recipe is somewhat inspired by Alton Brown’s Good Eats version. I usually top mine off with a sunny side up fried egg, or poached in this case, topped with some cracked African Smoked Pepper from Trader Joe’s.

This Chipotle Commercial is absolutely amazing. Do they really practice what they preach? Maybe. Nevertheless, I’m glad they are getting the message out there.

After a brief (maybe not so brief) break from blogging, I am back, or attempting to come back? Time will tell. Back in 2010, my blog suffered a server failure and I lost most of the content – and it just happened to coincide with my first pregnancy – being tired 20 hours out of the day does not make a good blogger. Now my little Olive (yes I named my kid after a delicious food) is almost 8 months old, she’s not as time consuming as she used to be, I might have some time to start blogging again. I have joined the blogging club at work (yes, we have a blogging club, and a fiber arts – knitting – club, a loose leaf tea club… anime club… a club addiction club… ok the last one is not true, but all the others are), and I’m hoping they will be the little nagging voice to encourage me to blog.

I lost a lot of the written content of my previous site, but I still have my photos saved – look at my gallery! Read my About me page too, after I create it, that is.

“Wait what, your work sounds awesome, all you do is join clubs?” – No we do other stuff too, like eat company provided pizza at clubs… Work with me?