Starting Real People Food: Foodie Abyss
Starting solids is a major milestone in any child’s life. One day you go from exclusive boob juice and or formula to something… well… solid. This is another area of parenthood that I felt very passionate about doing loads of research about. I really wanted to do baby lead weaning. Since my husband is French, and I love to cook, the culinary arts are highly valued in our house. I wasn’t expecting LBB to show up in a 3 star Michelin restaurant at 6 months old and eat escargot, but I also refused to start my child on eating rice cereal as their first food. It just didn’t seem to sit well with me. When we got the go-ahead from our pediatrician that we could start introducing food, this was actually her first suggestion. I was baffled, although I was prepared to hear that from a pediatrician due to all the blogs I had read about baby led weaning prior to going into this check up. So I promptly ignored this suggestion and shoved a ripe green avocado in her chubby cheeks. She loved every ounce of it. Her face covered in a thick layer of green goo while she squished pieces in her tiny little baby fingers. It gave me a level of joy I’m not sure I will ever comprehend. Not only did I ignore our pediatricians advice, but I felt empowered to continue down this path of the foodie abyss. It was glorious. However, there are a few resources that I used that really helped me in this journey. The first being Solid Starts. This blog is seriously amazing. It’s essentially a baby lead weaning database that provides you with a ton of resources by age for how to serve any food you could imagine to your bébé. They also have an app you can download so that you’re always able to search even when you’re on the go. Their instagram is also handy if you ever want to watch videos or get ideas for foods to serve. The world is your oyster when it comes to food, and this resource is here to help you concur that oyster!
The other resource I went to time and again was SimplyRealHealth: Sarah Adler’s 'Baby Food Files’. Sarah is a sorority sister of mine, that turned girl boss and started her own company focused on REAL food and lifestyle. It’s maj. Her adult cookbooks are amazing and her recipes are always on rotation in our house. So when she launched the Baby Food Files, it only felt natural to gravitate towards this resource. Her philosophy about food felt aligned with mine and her littles were gobbling down nothing but real, delish food. She also has handy recipes in this downloadable packet that were awesome! I even wanted to dig in and eat it myself. :)
Another fun resource that really sparked my curiosity towards baby led weaning was reading the book Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting by Pamala Druckerman. I laughed out loud so many times while reading this book. I remember reading it at night in bed before going to sleep, and rolling over cackling and asking my husband if this nonsense was true. He of course stated ‘absolutely, or rather absolument” and reminisced about his own childhood experiences growing up in France. One of Pamela’s stories about parents debating the preschool lunch menu’s content was pure gold. Long story short without spoiling the read for you…the French take food seriously, and the reason why those children eat anything and everything is because they are exposed to it at a young age. They start consuming things that some Americans will never eat in their lifetimes starting in preschool. So, I’m hoping that I can expand LBB’s palette starting young, and not raise her on nothing but mac & cheese and chicken nuggets. A girl can dream right?!
