So we ended up eating our smoked pork butt for almost the entirety of last week. It ran out by dinner Thursday, so we picked up a pizza (gotta get those gas points at Hy-Vee). I don’t think you can get more frugal than that.
We also put together a meal of roast chicken, gravy and sweet potatoes for Charlie and Victoria. They just had their baby a few weeks ago, and it was exciting to pay one of the many favors we received forward. Those meals in those first weeks were a lifesaver!
We treated ourselves to lunch out at Flat Branch. Beeb loves the steamed veggies, she was by far the happiest baby at the restaurant.
And then we made meatballs and spaghetti squash over the weekend to start the week.
I made some kale chips for Beeb. I wanted to give her something a bit different (crunchy!) but with only 2.5 teeth, we are somewhat limited. These are super light and easy/gentle for her to crunch into and it’s a surefire way to get more greens into her. They’ve been a hit and were so easy to make, just a little coconut oil and Himalayan sea salt.
I was almost giddy at the amount of prep I got done this weekend, felt almost like pre-Beeb days.
I also charred some peppers for her, which she also digs. She is so good with veggies, but we are definitely struggling with meat. I feel like some days, she’ll just tear into it, and other days it’s sneakily thrown to the dogs, smashed under her cup, or spit out. Our conundrum is this, do we feed her anything, just to make sure she gets something, or do we stand our ground to make sure she doesn’t end up with a limited range of foods she’s willing to eat? Ideas? Right now what we’re going to try to do is sneak things into other things and hope it works.
After thinking I was going to do Baby Led Weaning and my son outright telling/showing me he was not interested, having the worst texture issues, I was highly concerned we were going to have food issues. Somehow, though, in August things clicked and now we’re doing much better. He loves chicken and we figured that out by giving him crockpot thighs that were tender. Now he’s a chicken fiend and will eat it a variety of ways. Ground turkey has been good, too.
I just offer what I can. Sometimes he play and doesn’t eat much and I’ll throw some yogurt puffs in at the end of the meal, but I figure overall he’s doing ok.
Keep offering the diversity but maybe give her little bits of the stuff she’ll eat after?
That’s kind of the mode we’re in. Last night Neil mixed her chicken with peas and a little butter and she lapped it right up. Her appetite definitely signals growth spurts/changes at this point. She ate tons of the weekend, then almost nothing on Monday, then EVERYTHING on Tuesday. One week she’ll love bananas, then the next week all she’ll want is toast. It’s not all that different from adults, but hard when they can’t express themselves yet. 🙂
All my reading indicates we should just keep offering food so our kids have options. Have you done tofu yet? My little one loves that, so it’s a good source of protein. We are also hit or miss on other meat. Ground beef is a fav — I think that’s because the chunks are small.
We gave her a whole ear of corn on the cob the other day, and she loved getting to eat just like us. Maybe try something fun like a chicken wing or bone in thigh?
I don’t know the study, but our on-campus doctor was telling me about one she recently read. It was with slightly older kids. But the study showed that kids, when offered a variety of food over the course of a week, would not have balanced meals but would ultimately balance out their consumption. Her take away was what I said above — keep offering options that are healthy, and your kid will learn to balance everything out.