New Kid in Town

There's a new little lady at our table these days. Nevermind that she does a Tarzan yell when she's overly hungry and would gnaw the table edge if we let her — she's excellent company.

I was chatting with Pattie at FoodShedPlanet the other day, and she asked how our daughter (Emerson — after the b.s.-ignoring, life-embracing Mr. Emersons in "A Room With a View") has changed the way we eat. The short answer is that we no longer have the luxury of time with which to be overly particular. These days it's less about what we feel like eating than what's in the house, or can be quickly delivered.

The longer answer, though, is that despite being a person who used to think about food more or less constantly, she's caused me to re-examine everything I buy and eat. Changed me to the root. When I was breastfeeding (the well went dry at six months) everything I brought to my mouth triggered the question: Do I really want to feed her this? And now that she's eating "solid" foods — now that I'm responsible for filling the tummy of this squeaky-clean little person who I'm shaping with each spoonful — questions that I vaguely or occasionally considered before are now bold-faced and sharp: Was this sprayed with chemicals? Was its DNA modified in lab? Who made this and with what intentions?

Last week I steamed and pureed some bosc pears for her. I'd made sure they were organic when I bought them, but peeling them I noticed their stickers said they were grown in the USA. Where are pears growing in February, I started to wonder. Have they been in an airless room since November, or were they grown more recently and shipped thousands of miles?

Surely, it's a slippery slope, just how much to geek out about what to feed her. I love this kid ferociously. With a degree of love that six months ago I couldn't have grasped (my mother has always said to my sisters and me, in a playful way, "I love you more," when we tell her we love her, and only now do I know she was right). I guess my point is, I'm still finding my footing on that slope.  

It's hardly all furrowed-brows and soul-searching, though. Choosing, one by one, which new tastes to introduce her to — sweet potato, avocado, peas, banana — has been not only fun but a welcome reminder of how delicious a single, well-chosen ingredient can be. Those pears couldn't cook fast enough. In the kitchen together, Rich and I took turns standing over the pot and inhaling. Their scent wasn't "pear," it was honey, vanilla, coconut. I filled an ice-tray with single-servings for Em, but first Rich and I, a little guiltily (stealing food from a baby!) each had a bowl of the puree for dessert. The best dessert I've had in some time.

The last few days, though, I've started giving her slightly more complex tastes, after dipping into cookbooks and visiting a pediatrician who thinks the one-new-food-every-three-days rule is old-fashioned. (Her daughter's first food, she told me, was white beans cooked in broth with garlic and rosemary, because that's what she was feeding the rest of her family; a jerky part of me thought: show-off.) I went home and made red lentils with cumin, which went over better once I stirred in some prunes, one day, and pears the next. (I don't blame the kid, they totally needed salt — a thing I've read is bad for babies' kidneys. I hope someone tells me soon that that's a lie. It seems a shame, too, to eat avocado without a sprinkle of the coarse stuff.)

On Friday, taking an idea from the Annabel Karmel "First Meals" cookbook a friend lent me, I made a puree of organic leeks, potato and peas — first sautéing the leeks in olive oil, adding the cubed potato, and then a cup of very, very diluted organic mushroom stock (the recipe called for all stock but, again, the salt issue stopped me). Once the potatoes were soft I added a cup of frozen peas, cooked it a few more minutes, and then pureed it with a little water. It's the most trouble I've gone to for her dinner so far, and in the end it was just okay. I wish I'd put the emphasis on the peas instead of the potatoes. Em's been eating it, but she's made clear that she'll take a bowl of the cooked pears over it any day.

That's my girl.