Little Hand's First Birthday

Little Hand's birthday was a low-key event with exactly three guests: himself, his dad, and me :) Everything else was likewise simple.

Decorations were kept to the general notion of red, yellow, and blue. (Slightly more complex than our wedding's colors of black and white ^-^). We hung the decorations the night before, so Little Hands could enjoy his decorations. My assessment is that he was charmed by the change of colors in the kitchen.

Yup, unceremoniously hung with masking tape.

I hung a few blue fans from the tray of his high chair, yet Litlte Hands quickly plucked them off for closer inspection and tasting.

His birthday events were likewise simple. When DH came home he blew up a yellow, helium balloon which served as Little Hand's birthday present. Kiddo was delighted by its defiance of gravity. We had all of his favorite foods over the course of the day: formula for first breakfast, fresh strawberries with vanilla yogurt and granola for second breakfast; pepper jack cheese, hotdogs, and tortillas for lunch; spaghetti and frozen peas for dinner, and more formula for second dinner. I made the spaghetti sauce the week before and froze it, so dinner was particularly easy.

Oh? You noticed I missed second lunch? That would be smash cake :) It was a heavy debate between a "healthy" cake and a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. In the end, I went middle of the road: strawberries, shortcake, and a mound of mildly sweet whipped cream. Little Hands ate with both hands and a serious demeanor, but managed to make a big enough mess to make his mama proud.

Pureed Fairytale Pumpkin

I wanted to roast and puree a pumpkin for Little Hands. At Central Market I asked a produce stocker for tips on how to select a pie pumpkin. The staff at Central Market are fabulous - when you can find one; they really know their products. He gave me great advice on how to select a pumpkin, and then he suggested that what I really ought to try was the fairytale pumpkins. He said that they are sweeter than the little "pie pumpkins" we were looking at.

Did you know fairytale pumpkins are edible? I had thought that they were decorative pumpkins. I had expected them to be unappetizing like the pumpkins more commonly used for jack o' lanterns.

Fairytale pumpkins were $8 compared to the $2.50 for a pie pumpkin. I was relucant to pay that much for a pumpkin; Mama-hona kindly purchased me this beauty. This pumpkin is larger than I wanted because the pricing scheme was flat regardless of pumpkin size. I couldn't reach the smaller ones in the back of the stack, and the larger ones seemed enormous.

I followed the directions on how to roast a fairytale pumpkin this blog. Essentially: whack it up, clean it out, stick it in the oven at 400* for 2 and a half hours, puree it, drain it, et voila!

My notes to add.

• The majority of my pumpkin was going into baking applications, so I wanted to get rid of as much water as possible. Unlike smaller squash, don't add water to the roasting pan. The liquids will be added back in at baking time; it is better to add liquid than have a soupy batter!
• Cover the roasting pan in tin foil. Pumpkin is thick, so it needs all the help it can get!
• Cut the pumpkin into smaller, even pieces. I unnecessarily followed the natural lines of the pumpkin and the larger pieces took 45 minutes longer to cook than the thinner pieces.

I squeezed the puree in a tea towel; the liquid was carrot-orange bright. Then I left puree in the fridge overnight to drain. The puree itself is a likewise happy, bright color.

Once I was happy with the consistancy, I divided it into 1 cup increments for freezing. One can of pumpkin is 2 cups minus 2 Tablespoons. Lucky Little Hands will get to eat the extra tablespoons :)

My ~24-lb pumpkin yielded a half gallon of pumpkin puree. In more useful statistics, a little over 4, 15-oz cans of pumpkin. That means for outright cost I broke about even if canned pumpkin isn't on sale. That's not counting the cost of running the oven for hours nor the value of my time.

For comparison, I also roasted what was labeled as a "pie pumpkin." By the time I got around to roasting it, it weighed a mere 6.5 pounds. I'm convinced it lost a few pounds while it spent two weeks as a "toy" in our living room. (So weight does not necessarily equal volume.) The pie pumpkin yielded 3 cups of puree.

Fruit and Vegetable Purees III

I have been making baby food for Little Hands about every two weeks. It has just worked out that way. When Little Hands starts to run out, I make more. This past week we went on an excursion to buy more produce for him to eat. I came home with carrots, sweet potatoes (twice as much as before), a purple sweet potato (because it sounded neat), a peach, pears, an acorn squash, and green beans. Sadly, the peach molded on the counter in the two days it took me to go from shopping to food creation.

Little Hands inspects the quality of my work on foods I don't consider a choking hazard. (This carrot was cut in half before being put in the oven.)

The lower rack of my oven is filled with carrots, sweet potatoes, the purple sweet potato, and a couple of russets for dinner for DH and me.

The upper rack contains the pears and acorn squash. I started off the oven at 350* for the 45 min and then at 400* for another 25 minutes. The pears were done in about 15 minutes. The carrots in for 45 min. And everything else for the full 70 minutes.

Meanwhile, I cooked the green beans on the stove in about an inch of water. My last steaming basket rusted and I vowed to buy a silicone one, but I have yet to find a silicone steaming basket I like.

I thought roasted carrots would be a nice flavor variation for Little Hands who doesn't have many flavors available to him. The end product isn't to my liking. The roasted carrots were much drier than I had anticipated - they were quite dehydrated by the time they became fork-tender. Thus I had to add a lot of thinning water, and I still had very little produce from one pound of carrots vs steaming. (I don't have numbers on this claim. Just observation.) I also had to keep the oven at a much lower temperature for longer than I would have preferred. In the future, I'll stick to steaming carrots.

Ta-daaaa.

• The top left is the green beans. I didn't make many as some people complain frozen green bean puree becomes gritty. This is a test batch.
• The next down are the roasted carrots.
• The four black-ish blocks are the purple sweet potato. I chose the smallest potato available and didn't try to hard to squeeze every ounce out of the potato when I saw how intense the color is! My small taste of purple sweet potato seemed more floral than regular sweet potato. If Little Hands loves it, I'll probably make more. The intent of this was just for amusement's sake.
• The lower left is the acorn squash. Little Hands approves of acorn squash on most days. In this picture, a third of the bag had already been consumed.
• Top right corner are the baked pears. They are quite sweet and have a strong pear taste to them. Little Hands hasn't been much interested in eating them unless they're mixed in with his oatmeal.
• Bottom right are two bags of sweet potato. Little Hands has started to get bored with it, but he's still eating the supply steadily.

Curiously, Little Hands has started to favor the Butternut Squash. He was so disinterested before that I didn't bother to make any this time!

Fruit and Vegetable Purees II

Little hands speed through his first batch of sweet potato, so I set out to make him a second batch. This time I documented the process.

I decided since I was heating up the oven I might as well make Little Hand's next food, apples, while I was at it. I chose Braeburn apples because they would handle the baking process well. Little Hands thinks they're too tart, so next time I may try Fujis.

Prepare the sweet potatoes: wash, pierce, and wrap in foil. Note I made the mistake of piercing through the foil. This left me digging out four bits of foil out of every potato. I've never noticed this in my own baked potatoes (oops), but it caught my Mama eye in the finishing steps.

Prepare the apples: core the apples, place in a pan with 1" of water. We don't own an apple corer, so DH used a metal teaspoon to core the apples for me.

Bake in a 400* F oven. The apples will be done in about 30 minutes: fragrant, fork-tender, and the skin is dark. Reserve the apple baking liquid for thinning. The sweet potatoes will be done when they're squishy; about 1 hour. (In this picture you may or may not notice that I tossed some potatoes in for DH and myself.)

I initially took my Kidco Food Mill to the apples, but that was a lot of work and it was just creating a standard applesauce texture.

So I had DH take the immersion blender to them instead. Same texture. Much faster. Add water from the baking pan as necessary to aid the blender. Use the same liquid to thin the applesauce to the desired viscosity.

Measure out the sauce for freezing. Most people seem to use an ice cube tray. I like the perfect, 1/2-oz squares this Wilton brownie bites silicone pan makes.

Remove the peel of the sweet potatoes. Then prepare in the same fashion as the apples, adding your choice liquid for thinning. I tend to thin my baby food as little as possible in favor of controlling the viscosity after thawing.

Vegetable Purees

Here's my first set of baby purees: steamed carrots, steamed peas, baked sweet potato, and baked butternut squash. Silly me thought I wanted to purchase spaghetti squash, I purchased what looked right without reading its sticker, and it turned out to be I wanted butternust squash and I purchased butternut squash. That's a case of two wrongs do make a right :) Little hands likes carrots and peas, loooooves sweet potato, and neither likes nor dislikes butternut squash.

The blog was fairly silent this week because my mother-in-law was in town and we worked on making something big together. I'll get it posted once it is finished!

Dribble Bibs

Little Hands needed dribble bibs, and I wasn't happy with the low absorbency of the commercially available bibs. This pattern was a very simple trace-and-create job. Fussing with the bias tape all around those corners, however, was not simple. I made three bibs for Little Hands and one for another baby, but ended my plans to future bibs. Now that I have a few geeky bibs for my little 'un, I'd rather devote my time towards other projects than this one.

Supply List

• Tissue paper from my stash. I believe it was purchased from a long time ago.
Carter's bib to trace. I like Carter's design because it fastens on the side rather than behind the head.
• Print fabric Robert Kaufman Robot Factory by Caleb Gray from Fabric.com (Though I noticed this week that the robot print is now available at The Common Thread, but the circuit print remains unavailable locally.)
• The absorbant is 11oz Microfiber Terry from Fabric.com
• The bias tape was made from fabric purchased at Quilter's Folly. Unfortunately, I have no idea what the fabric prints are.
• The touch tape and loop fabric for fastening came from Kids in the Garden

Method for Sewists

1. Trace a bib on tissue paper. I tweaked the design to be a bit larger.
2. Cut out two layers of pretty fabric; make certain they're opposites! And one layer of absorbent liner. My terry cloth really makes this to be extremely absorbent, but it also makes for a bulkier bib. Little Hands has not complained about the bulk, and I like the extra absorbency.
3. Prepare bias tape. I used only a 1/4 yard of fabric with 1.5" strips and had plenty for two bibs. Of course, your yardage will vary depending on the circumference of the bib pattern you use.
4. Cut hook tape and loop fabric to size. Stitch hook to the neck loop end of one piece of fabric. Stitch loop to the bib body of the other piece of fabric. This step is really why I even bother writing out these directions. On my first attempt I forgot to attach the side of the hook and loop that isn't attached by the bias tape.
5. Layer fabrics and attach bias tape.