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Monday, November 30, 2009

Pickled WHAT in a jar?

So, feeding Caroline is a whole new experience out here in North Dakota. When we were here this summer, she hadn't really started solids yet, but now that she's almost 10 months old, "real food" is a much bigger part of her diet.

And it's kind of difficult to do out here.

I'm pretty neurotic about what she eats, because I'm a little bit of a health nut and always try to think about what kind of eating habits I'm helping her create for later in life. I don't know if I've mentioned this here before, but I make all of her food. This is mainly driven by grad-student poverty and extra stay-at-home-mom time, with a little bit of "gray meat and fluorescent veggies squick me out" thrown in there.

So I went to the nearest grocery store, which I just have to point out is almost 30 miles away and is actually in Montana. I knew I was in trouble when I saw the teeny little fresh produce section next to the rows and rows of frozen aisles, but I guess that's the way it goes when you live in a very remote area where things would spoil before they ever get sold. Here's a list of just a few of the things Caroline eats all the time that you CANNOT find at said grocery store:

  1. Whole milk dairy products like yogurt, ricotta, cottage cheese, etc.
  2. Anything organic. I try not to get too spastic about eating all-organic because it's so expensive, but I do have a lot of vague and rather arbitrary food categories that I prefer to be organic, such as "things you don't peel before eating" and "things that seem kinda dirty".
  3. Any kind of antibiotic- or hormone-free meats or eggs.

You can, however, find things like:

  1. Pickled pigs' feet in a jar (organic status unknown, but questionable).
  2. Any cut of beef or type of wild game you can imagine.
  3. The biggest variety of frozen pizzas, TV dinners, and fish sticks that I've ever seen.

You can see that it's kind of a challenge. I finally left with a lot of frozen fruit and veggies, some cheese, and some sweet potatoes and squash. Luckily I had suspected ahead of time that feeding would be problematic, so I had sent non-spoilable things like organic black beans, oatmeal, and dried fruit with Tyler in his car.

Mainly I've just had to get over the fact that she won't be eating much fresh food for the next month. Really it's no big deal for such a short period of time, but like I said, I'm neurotic. The upside: you can't get fresher beef than the stuff my in-laws get straight from their rancher relatives, so I think it might be time Caroline had her first baby hamburger!

5 comments:

edmo said...

I made all of my son's food and was also anal about everything I put in his body. I totally relate. But I guess it is true, one month won't hurt. At least she's not at an "impressionable" age where a month of not-as-healthy food will become like candy to her and she won't want to go back to the organic fresh stuff.

Kristen said...

You can make steak baby food -- I made it out of venison for my daughter and she loved it when I mixed it with some applesauce. :)

SweetPea said...

I made all of Em's food too and I'm much more concerned about what I feed her than what I feed myself and my husband. I have been buying fresh and freezing it lately since the fresh stuff goes bad so fast. With most veggies you just have to blanch them and then throw them in ice cold water to stop the cooking process before you bag them and freeze them!

It's not the same as fresh but it's better than frozen in my opinion! Good luck and if she gets a little venison it won't kill her. ;) Em tried venison this weekend and loved it!

Anonymous said...

amazon.com offers a variety of organic food. A lot of items have free shipping.

Sono-Ma: Holly White-Wolfe said...

You are hilarious! I also take feeding my son very seriously, and try hard to figure out how to get along with my local grocery stores. Check out my posts when you get a minute...

http://sono-ma.blogspot.com/2009/07/weekly-meal-planning-for-family-of-four.html

http://sono-ma.blogspot.com/2009/06/trader-joes-whole-foods-olivers-other.html