It began as a mere inkling in my heart to try something new, a foray into the unknown landscape of the produce department, a conference with my blender and ice cube trays. I was also looking into ways to cull our budget and buying fresh produce, blending it, and then freezing it is monumentally cheaper than buying mountains of baby food jars. I then uttered the inevitable phrase, “How hard could it be? It’s just blending a bunch of stuff.” And that was my downfall.
Once at the grocery store, I marveled at the inclined stacks of wet leaves, rounded waxy peppers, and earthen piles of potatoes. I bee-lined for the foods that I had researched as good starters for babies: sweet potatoes and pears. I saw that the sign said, “Yams” so, of course, I had to break out my iPhone and look up the difference between yams and sweet potatoes. For our purposes here, there is no difference. Great. I headed to the pear section in which there were about seven different varieties. I chose the ones that looked the most like the ones I ate as a child. Logical, right?
I will now confess that I had to look up how to bake a potato. Let me reiterate, I’m no cook. After finally figuring it out, I baked them and set them aside to cool. Now, a kitchen whiz would have checked to see if the blender base and bowl were properly screwed together, but, as aforementioned, I’m no whiz. I promptly added the sweet potatoes to the blender, added my water and blended. After the mixture achieved the perfect level of smoothness, I picked up the blender bowl, only to discover that I had permanently infused the base of my blender with a sticky, sugary, orange mess. Crap.
Now, a lesser mom would have hung up her apron and called it quits, or perhaps a smarter mom, I’m not sure which. But, oh no, not this mom, I wasn’t finished ruining my kitchen yet. My next attempt was carrots, which I thought were perfectly innocent, beautiful vegetables, the humblest of roots. I decided to steam them on the stove in a steamer basket in a pot of boiling water. I left them there to steam only to forget to turn down the stove once the water had reached a boil. I was on the couch when I smelled something like burnt sugar. Oh crap. I raced over to the stove only to realize that all of the water had boiled off and I was now melting the coating of my non-stick pan, which is not very eco-friendly by the way. Upon checking the carrots, there were pieces of blackened coating all over them, a cesspool of charred perfluorooctanoic acid. I had made carcinogen carrots. Not exactly the best thing to feed to a baby. I quickly removed the toxic pot from my house and opened up all the doors and windows, broke out the box fan and aerated the whole place. Holy eff.
Since then I have cleaned out and learned how to properly assemble my blender. I’ve even learned how to steam carrots using the microwave! I might not be the best cook, but I’m trying my hardest to be the best mom I can be. Liam loves his homemade food and I’m happy to make it for him. As long as I don’t burn whole the house down.