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!