Family vacations
As long-time readers might know, for the last 5 out of 6 summers we’ve rented a cottage alongside members of Carl’s family for a clan vacation. Lots of memories there - in the early stages of pregnancy with Emily; the summer after Emily died. Boyfriends past and present; drama past and present. But always a lot of sun, water, barbeque, and a chance to get to know people beyond the rush of a day here or a dinner there.
Packing this year has been insane. It’s less fraught than it was when I was packing for the Briars in March: I feel like whatever we forget, we will be able to manage without (or to find in the area). Noah’s more resilient and we’re more experienced. But there’s a lot: linens, water toys, safety stuff for things like plugs and cupboards, and food.
And President’s Choice screwed me over when it comes to food. Noah hasn’t had a lot of jarred baby food except for lazy days and meals out, but we had been blessed with the PC Organics line of food. And when the Organics was out, the PC regular baby food was pretty much the same. Our staple for meals: sweet potato and chicken with the ingredients: sweet potato, chicken, water. At least until three weeks ago, when suddenly and oddly everyone sold out of first the Organics and then the regular. And no new food appeared. Until finally… it did in a new jar, same name, but the following ingredient list: sweet potato, water, apricot puree, chicken, rice flour.
!!
Not only is this 7 gr of sugar over the original 4 and stupid (get those kids hooked on overly sweet entrees now!), but - Noah hates it. I hate it too. The texture is gelatinous. It’s gross. And guess what? Earth’s Best Organics has the same list (surprise, surprise… I sense megafoodcorp monopolies at work).
So I bought a mini food processor and I hope it works all week (for $8, I’m suspicious). But it’s annoying; I wanted to have some jarred stuff for back up because, you know, it’s a cottage - the fridge may not be as cold, we might be running around. And now I’m stuck with single ingredient jars or the lentil &vegetable mix (but Noah can only tolerate so much lentil, right now, before he gets a rashy bottom). Not just because most of the “meals” contain things he either isn’t eating yet (corn) but because he does not like them.
Of course I have only myself to blame, because we’ve been pretty hardcore about feeding Noah “real food” (i.e. stuff we’ve pureed) and that’s what he likes, now. It’s kind of amazing that already he has preferences and already our food habits have affected him.
He’s still not too too close to “eating what we eat” which was my ped’s goal for the one year mark, but we’re getting closer. He eats rice pasta and veggie sauce with ground chicken or beef or lamb (ground meaning by me; not the ground from the supermarket, I’ve been too paranoid about that stuff. I blame Fast Food Nation.) although he doesn’t eat a lot of tomato yet, it gives him a rashy bum too. He eats almost all the vegetables we do (he doesn’t like broccoli or cauliflower much) and he’s now eating small amounts of mild cheddar cheese and yoghurt, and small amounts of wheat like the occasional cracker. Most of the standard fruits except berries (except he has had blueberry). Lentils but not chickpeas. No nuts or eggs. He eats rice and oatmeal and barley just fine. Nothing processed or salted like ham or sausages though. And no soy yet, which would help a lot but we’re being slow on the legumes ’cause of allergies.
I am paranoid about the grinding of meat and mashing/chopping of things though. It’s that asphyxiation fear again and I decided if it makes him picky about texture, then it does. After seeing Emily come out grey/blue, I get leeway on anything involving airways for at least another year.
While we’re gone I leave you with some pictures. Click for the larger image; these thumbnails will be a little distorted. :)
Carl and Noah at the splash pad at the zoo
Noah and Emily (I erased our last name from the picture)
Noah trying out his trike (he can’t really get on it himself)
The ravine path on our walk
The trees at the edge of the hidden park on our walk; those are very aggressive vines climbing up the willows, which I am also constantly having to weed out of our yard.
Comments
3 Responses to “Family vacations”
Leave a Reply
I think you will do fine with the food processor on vacation. We had the same type of thing when Evie was little as well. I never bought jarred foods and just took what we ate, added a bit of breastmilk to it and pureed or loosely processed it for her to eat. Even on trips and such, it may be a bit more work but it was well worth it.
Lovely photos. Carl and Noah look like they are having a lot of fun. I also have quite a few pictures of Evie and Bernadette’s gravestone together. It’s odd how what we consider these photos normal and ok to take now.
Have a great trip!
Okay, it’s way too late for this now (at least for your trip), but when Molly was at the same stage I wasn’t going to be shelling out a buck to a buck and a half a jar for decent organic baby food on a regular basis, so what I did was make good-sized batches (about two cups) of pureed-whatever up in my food processor, then pour/spoon the puree into ice cube trays and freeze them. A single cube is just about an ounce, so I could keep track of how much she ate, and by washing and re-using some of the few baby food jars we really did buy, I could drop a frozen cube or two into a jar and take it with us if I knew we were going to be eating out.
I did use some of the organic ground meat stuff, ’cause I found a really good sale on it at one point, but most of what she ate those few months was purees that I froze and stored in ziploc bags until I needed them. (Now that I think about it, I think there’s a half-ziplock of pureed sweet potato still in the back of my freezer.)
Anyway, great pictures and have fun on your trip!
We did much the same as Brair, freezing our own pureed foods. Nothing added. We were able to get organic feed ground meats and free range chicken. Since it was only for the boys the expense wasn’t too harsh. We would boil the chicken and use the broth in the puree. It wasn’t much extra work and we could make enough to last a week or more. We kept the extra broth to add to other meats or vegetables. We also gave eggs sooner then what they now call for, with no ill effects. Scrambled eggs were quick and easy and adding spinach was always a hit, they became “green eggs and ham” without the ham ofcourse.
Hope all went pleasantly well.
Margret