The process of becoming unprocessed

I fed my daughter zucchini today. Fresh, local, organic zucchini from our CSA share (Community Supported Agriculture--boxed produce from a local organic farmer). James chopped it up and steamed it last night, and I zipped it up in the mini food processor this morning. Her facial expressions during her first few tries were priceless, but she ate the entire refilled baby food container.

When Judah was still eating baby food, a very unconventional friend of ours (who has nine children) asked, "What exactly is baby food?" He said that they just took whatever they were eating and mashed it up for the little ones. I told him that I bought the jarred stuff because it was so much more convenient. To be honest, I hadn't given much thought to making my own, and if I mashed up what I was eating at the time, the nutritional value of a typical meal for Judah would have been grossly embarrasing.

I'm getting there. The process of becoming unprocessed is a slow one. The shift from fast food to slow food takes time. One of the definitions of repentance is "to change your way of thinking." I guess I'm repenting from a lifetime of processed, refined, nutritionally deficient pseudofood.

While Judah was playing at the little train station in the children's section of Davis Kidd bookstore, I discovered the book Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron. We bought it from Amazon, and in the past 18 months, I've read through parts of it (she covers a lot more than just baby food), and I've tried a few of the toddler recipes (we actually made homemade granola bars a few weeks ago). Nearly two years later, I'm starting to change my way of thinking. I'm mashing up fresh bananas. I'm pureeing oatmeal. I'm even cooking carrots.

After changing a few interesting diapers, I realized Miriam hadn't had enough fruit, so I picked up a pear that was sitting on the counter, peeled it, cored it with my apple corer, and zipped it up in the mini food processor. She loved it. And her diaper contents improved--well, softened.

I realized afterward that it never dawned on me to do the same for Judah. All of his pears came from a jar, which also means they were cooked. Since fruits and vegetables lose some of their nutrients when heated, serving both raw and cooked foods is important. Judah didn't eat any raw fruits until he could chew, and even then the selection was limited mostly to bananas and apples.

Side note: it occurred to me one day to put just water in his sippy cups. I had equated sippy cups with juice cups, so the idea to fill them with just water was, for me, quite a revelation--something I hadn't read in any parenting magazine, website, or book.

So far Miriam has tried homemade oatmeal, carrots, zuchinni, banana, and pear (in addition to some organic jarred fruits & veggies), and she seems to enjoy eating. One benefit of preparing her food myself (aside from the nutritive value) is that if I use my tongue to clean up a spill, I'm not grossed out. It's all rather tasty.