Bubba Grub

First, I give myself the award for most random blog. First it's trannies and now, baby food. Hey, no one can accuse me of not following MY bliss! HA!

Bubba is 8 1/2 months old now, and that means it's high time we started to introduce meats into his diet. I was not really sure how to go about this, because the idea of pureed meats made me gag to tell the truth. I was at the grocery store and noticed teeny jars of strained meat on the shelf, tucked among the pretty colored jars of fruits and veggies.

Um, one word. EW!!!! I knew that nothing I could make would look THAT bad, right? Lindsay had mentioned this book on her blog:

(this is the new, expanded version)

and said it had some really great recipes for baby food, so I decided to get myself a copy. The only problem was, me being me, I didn't remember the exact title of the book when I went to the bookstore, and I ended up getting this one instead:

It's still good. There are some great recipes in there. I'm not gonna lie though, I still want the first one. It had MORE recipes. I think that between the two I'll definitely be set as far as baby and toddler cooking goes. I actually tried the first recipe a few weeks ago, and Bubba liked it, so I quadrupled it tonight so that I could make myself a freezer stash. I also took pictures so that if you're reading this, and you have a baby who is eating foods at this stage, and you are so inclined, you can make it too. Just remember, this recipe is QUADRUPLED!!!

Ground turkey, Squash, and Tomatoes

Adapted from First Meals and More by Annabel Karmel

Take a medium sized butternut squash, peel it, and cut it into a tiny dice. The book says to grate it, but um... I hate grating stuff. I fear for my knuckles! You're also going to need a can of diced tomatoes (the book says fresh but I'm lazy) and a package of ground turkey. Mine is 1.25 lbs, but a pound would work just as well, I think. The author said to use ground beef, but ground beef grosses me out. Well, except in burgers, and then I need someone else to make them. Yuckola.

Yeah, I'm weird.

Place a couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil in a frying pan. Add your ground turkey and cook until it's browned.

Add your finely diced squash:

And the tomatoes. I used organic squash and tomatoes, but I'm too cheap to buy organic turkey. I'm telling myself that two out of three isn't bad!

Stupid ugly, ghetto apartment stove. I dream of gas burners and stainless steel. One day I'll have them! In the meantime, I'll just deal with cream colored enamel and electric coil elements. BLAH.

Oh yeah, saute that mixture for 5-7 minutes, or until the squash starts to get soft.

Add two cups filtered water

And bring to a boil.

Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer for ten minutes.

It will pretty much look the same when you take off the lid as it did when you put on the lid, except the squash won't be as opaque. Turn off the heat and let it cool in the pan for about 10 - 15 minutes.

After it's cooled, take an immersion blender and puree it right in the pan.

You can also put it into a regular jar blender if you don't have an immersion blender. If you're making baby food often though, I highly recommend getting one. They're SO much easier to clean up after than a regular blender!

I'm not gonna lie to you - the resulting mixture looks pretty damn nasty. It just doesn't look quite as nasty as the stuff in the jars, that's all. Also, I know that I made it and there aren't any weird additives or chemicals, since I used mostly organic ingredients. I spooned it into one of these:that my mother in law sent me. I like it because it has a lid (no fighting with plastic wrap!) and the compartments are a bit larger than the ones in the silicone tray I use for fruits and veggies. With those, I like the smaller portions because we usually blend a few things together (such as strawberries and bananas or blueberries and mangoes) where with this recipe, it will be used on it's own so I don't need to break it into smaller portions. Make sense?

I put what didn't fit into this tray into a container in the fridge. Then after the first batch was frozen, I transferred them into a Ziploc bag and froze what was in the fridge.

So there you go! Baby chow!