Around here, we love top 10 lists. I particularly enjoyed Jessica’s Top Ten Things I Ate in College That I’ll Never Eat Again. It brought back some fond memories and the taste of stomach acid. I might also add the Ramen sandwich and instant apple cider made with dorm room sink water. But it’s been ten years since I entered that freshman dorm, and life as a parent has taken me to some new culinary lows. So, here we go…the top 10 foods only a baby (or maybe a toddler) could love:
10. Single-Grain Cereal
As a child, my mom tried to sell me on the virtues of a strange paste called Cocoa Wheats, sometimes singing the jingle as she stirred the gluey concoction on the stove. Even at the tender age of 8, I knew that stuff was nasty. And yet, we are told to give it to babies as their first food because it’s “highly digestible” and has a “smooth texture.” I think we’ve only succeeded this long because they can’t talk back. Just a warning, parents, they get over it pretty quickly and you’ll be stuck with a box of the stuff for months or years to come.
9. Pureed Vegetables
All the texture of rice cereal, plus the power to stain any and all surfaces they touch — liquified veggies are truly abhorrent. Since we waited until Elijah was six months old to give him solid foods, the mushy green paste period was mercifully short. We never tried the jarred meat, so I can only imagine the horror. And the smell.
I have been to a few restaurants lately where super-smooth vegetable mush was passed off as “sauce.” Nope. I’m on to you. Gerber has a stake in this somewhere.
8. Food Off the Floor
Now, before you go and call me a snob, know that I am not talking about the 5-second rule, or even the 30-second rule. I am talking about days-old, dried up, stuck-to-the-floor old food. My son was never big on putting foreign objects into his mouth, but if it is, or once was, food — look out. On the upside, I will say that my sweeping standards are dramatically higher as a result.
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