Have you ever tasted baby food? When our daughter was a baby I tried it and no wonder babies are fussy!

Why, I wondered, did baby food taste so … uh, bad, let’s say. As I suspect with most babies, our daughter certainly quickly developed baby food likes and dislikes (mostly dislikes as I recall but it was over 35 years ago so my memory may be a little hazy). Carrots and peas weren’t among her favorite foods. It was amazing how completely they got expelled to ooze down her chin onto her bib. Her bibs began to look like they’ve been tie-dyed from the stains left behind (ah, tie-dyed, that dates me doesn’t it).

But it was beets that sealed the deal for me. I had never seen beets come out of a baby’s mouth before you could remove the spoon. It was like some (beet) red viscous lava flow erupted from her mouth seemingly before the spoon containing the beets entered. In fact, it was downright uncanny the way she prevented beets from entering her mouth. Even at one year old she exhibited that steely stubborn streak that was to bedevil me for years to come.

As a good father (at least I tried to be one) I was convinced that this state of affairs had to cease so I resolved to fix this situation. Being young and confident I was sure I could do better than a jar of baby food. Besides fresh homemade baby food would be healthy.

Since this was my first attempt at making baby food I decided to start with something simple that I myself liked. That way I’d have a baseline or reference for comparison. Accordingly since I liked meat and meat was full of protein necessary for a growing body it was natural that my first attempt was to create a meaty culinary treat.

I started by opening a jar of baby meat and tasting it. It tasted, well, it tasted … uh, well, YUCKY! I mean, it hardly had any taste at all. It defined the word bland. Even as bland as it tasted my daughter had no trouble swallowing it. If she had could swallow this food with no problem I shuttered to think of how the carrots, peas and especially the beets may have tasted (mercifully, I didn’t try them).

Well, the solution seemed simple enough. First I bought some high quality steaks. I broke our budget and paid a bundle for them as I recall. Next we barbecued the steaks until they were nice and tasty. Smoke mixed with such delicious flavors drifted off the barbecue into my nostrils that they definitely announced the mouth watering presence of a luscious meaty treat. Now, I ask you, what better ingredients could I start with?

Naturally, we had to eat the steaks first in order to make sure they would give my daughter the eating experience she deserved. I must say I have seldom, if ever, tasted a better steak. They were perfect. All I had to do now was to cut a steak up into small enough pieces for my daughter to swallow.

It turned out that preparing the meat for a baby was a wee bit more difficult than I’d anticipated but I wasn’t worried. Since I couldn’t chop the meat up fine enough manually to be safely eaten by a baby I got hold of a blender. Placing some small pieces of steak in the blender I turned it on. Almost immediately the steak was thrown against the blender wall where it stuck. I watched as the cutting wheel spun rapidly inside a neat meat donut with not much chopping going on.

Scraping the steak off the walls of the blender I set forth to feed my daughter but my wife immediately vetoed that course of action. Apparently the meat had to be pureed not just chopped up. This set off a series of trail and error, a contest of wills between me and the blender. In the end I won. Adding just the right amount of water to the steak mix kept everything in the midst of the blender blades and I managed to get a nice pureed steak ideal for baby consumption.

I’d done it. I’d made what was clearly going to be the gold standard in baby food for my daughter. Take this you corporate purveyors of bland revolting baby food, I thought. I beat you. I’d created something really special for my daughter that was both tasty and healthy. I’d be a family hero!

First, however, I made a final test. Serving up the pureed steak into a baby dish, I took a small spoon and tasted it. I savored the result as I rolled the meat across my tongue. And slowly, ever so slowly, the truth crept unbidden into my brain until I could no longer deny it.

My wonderful culinary creation tasted just exactly like a regular jar of baby meat!

Tags: cooking, Humor

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 at 10:41 am and is filed under Humor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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