Bored, Plenty to Do

I'm bored. I've got plenty of work (paid and otherwise) to be doing right now, but I'm not doing it. Unfortunately, I'm all caught up on all of my websites, I've played my latest game as far as it'll let me play without paying for it, AJ's asleep on my bed, so I'm not going to go do the other things I could be doing, just in case he decides to try to roll off...again...(boy is bound and determined to be dropped on his head).....so I'm just sitting here, trying to think of something worthy of blogging about.

Nope, nothing's coming to mind...well other than a "please, please, please buy me EV Nova for my birthday!!" But I don't think that counts.

Um....we're working out way into the fruits now with AJ (who can actually sit in his high chair - propped up on a towel, but still). He still LOVES carrots, likes sweet potatoes and squash, and will eat green beans, but I don't like his reaction to peas, so I think we're gonna hold off on those for a while longer and try them again later. I don't know how to describe it other than just my "MommySense" which makes me think that it's not just a dislike of the taste that makes him act the way he does when he eats them. Having no other green veggies to try (well, without cooking and mashing avocados and zucchini myself), we moved on to applesauce yesterday. I was hoping to start the tradition of eating a "breakfast" of fruit everyday, but AJ wasn't interested in the apples at all until it was "lunch" time, so that may or may not work. At lunch, he ate them gamely, although he didn't seem obsessively excited about it or anything. I didn't try them myself, but I'm guessing they were a little tart. He'll try some more once I actually get to the store and buy more.

Since this new habit of his has gotten to be rather expensive (he eats about five of the 2.5 oz packages a day, which costs about $2.50), I've started trying to make his food from scratch. It's really not hard or even that time consuming, but it _is_ messy, and I'm having to learn a few tricks.

First thing that I learned as I was madly steaming and mashing squash as he was eating the last of our store-bought food was that the squash is a very low-yield food. I mean, I get less than one 2.5 oz container from two good-sized yellow squash. Not really worth it except that they're really juicy and I get lots of good squash juice for use later on. Let's see...I spent $4.20 on squash and got _maybe_ three containers out of it which would cost $1.50 at the store...for a loss of $2.70.

The second thing that I learned was that sweet potatoes are a rather high-yield homemade baby food. From two normal-sized sweet potatoes, I got six very full 2.5-oz containers (so they were probably more like 3 oz), and each of those can really be cut in half and watered down (with squash juice) for an easier consistency. So from two sweet potatoes which cost $1.80, I got 12 containers, worth $6, saving us $4.20. Now, you add in the time it took to peel, cut, steam, and smush the potatoes and consider that I probably could have been doing "real" (and by that I mean paying) work, and I probably lost about $30, but if I can manage to multitask, then I think it's worth it. Plus it's fun to smush things in my food mill.

Carrots are medium-yield. From a standard bag of carrots (2 lb) I've gotten 6 2.5-oz containers that aren't quite so tightly packed as the sweet potatoes, and are a little juicier, so I don't think they'll quite double, but still, let's say nine 2.5-oz containers for another $1.80, in place of $4.50's worth from the store, saves me $2.70.

So between the three of them, I'm saving $4.20 on approximately 24 containers of food which will last him about five days. Heh...that's less than a dollar a day. Maybe not worth it? I dunno...I kinda like doing it.

Anyway...I haven't tried the zucchini yet (although I would suspect another low-yield veggie) or the butternut squash (medium-yield?). Now that he's starting the fruits too, I may try my hand at apples, etc., depending on seasons. I'm not sure that I'll try the green beans. They're so stringy that I'm not sure I really trust my food mill to smush adequately. Although I guess there would probably be less prep work prior to steaming than with the others...just snip the ends and check for bad ones.

In any case, should you try this at home, be sure to work with large quantities to minimize the time it takes you.

Now back to figuring out what to do to avoid doing any work.