babyfood 10 month old

Starting this month, the baby's food was getting more adventurous and fun with the introduction of herbs and spices. Our meals are getting more similar and sometimes we're even able to share some of our meals, which is awesome.

quinoa, chickpeas
Now Baby can eat two of my favorite foods too. yay. I love that quinoa can be the main grains of a meal as well as the protein source.

I used to serve pureed beans just as it is but I started to spread the puree on toasts this month. He seems to like it.

Udon
Udon is a type of Japanese noodles made of wheat. It is usually introduced at a fairly early stage of babyfood in Japan and I thought of introducing it earlier. But I didn't have a chance to go to an Asian grocery until this time. Since they are long like spaghetti, I break them into pieces before cooking and cook longer than what it says in the package till the noodles become really soft.

Herbs/Spices (Garlic, Cinnamon, Sage)
I love adding herbs and spices to babyfood. They can add tastes without making the food salty. For example, Baby doesn't like oatmeal very much probably because it's bland, but with cinnamon, he'll eat it. The same goes for steamed broccoli. Although he used to like broccoli, he's started to dislike it (ugh). He picks it up and throws it out from his high chair! But when I saute broccoli with a tiny amount of olive oil and garlic and/or sage, it becomes his favorite food. yay.

Onion
Actually, my husband and I hate onion. I could eat it if it's cooked really well, in the form of onion rings, or red onion in a small amount, but husband doesn't at all. So naturally we don't buy onion. However, when my parents were here, they bought some and left it in our fridge. Then I thought, why not. This would be a great chance for Baby to try onion. It turned out he loved it! I guess there's no reason to believe that he wouldn't like it just because both his parents hate it, right? I think I'll buy some time and again, since onion makes his food interesting too.

Butternut Squash
I would have introduced this earlier but since butternut squash is a fall vegetable, I waited till this time. I think it's important to eat seasonal produce even if baby doesn't know yet :)

Miso
I made a very weak miso soup so he could get used to the taste. Weak because otherwise it'll be too salty for babies. He loves it. In fact, I couldn't eat enough of miso soup when I was pregnant. Maybe baby wanted it before he was even born :)

Cheerios
I read again and again that doughnut shaped cereals are one of the best first finger foods for babies, so I've decided to give cheerios to him. He loves it. I think he thinks he's eating cookies or something :) Now cheerios became his regular breakfast along with fruits and soy yoghurt.

Next month, I'm planning to try seaweeds, some more herbs and spices, and perhaps mushrooms? It's going to be fun!

Birthday Card #1

I made this card for my FIL, who recently had his birthday. The card was inspired by the cards "Pastel Phrases" in the book the ultimate paper crafts collection. As a center piece, my final choices were this lighthouse one and a golf themed sticker (he loves playing golf) but I chose the lighthouse. The piece seemed to match with the background pattern and the overall color scheme better. And I thought the ocean and the lighthouse would be perfect because they recently had a trip to the Mediterranean region.

DIY air freshener

With the smell of LO's diaper pail getting stronger (ugh), I needed a good air freshener. I could easily buy one of those at a store but I gave a try on a DIY air freshener I found on pinterest. And it works great!

It's super easy and inexpensive. Basically what you need is a container, baking soda and essential oil. I actually used fragrance oil I found at Hobby Lobby to cut more cost (although essential oil would probably be better). So I had to add more than "several drops" called for in the instructions and to leave the lid open, but it does work. It makes your room smell fresh but is not overpowering like store-bought ones.

I believe there are more instructions online but the two I found on pinterest are:

DIY room air freshner

and

Super Simple Homemade Air Freshener

almond parmesan

I could see the fall has come because one day when I opened my pinterest page, it was filled with butternut squash recipes. In fact, I just made creamy butternut squash pasta the previous night*. I don't look forward to chilly days but I love fall comfort foods and fall colors.

Among the recipes I found on my pinterest page, this roasted butternut squash with kale and almond pecan parmesan particularly caught my eyes. It looked so comforting and delicious. I still had some butternut squash so immediately tried this. I had to made some modifications because I didn't have all the ingredients. I even had to omit pecan from the almond pecan parmesan but I loved it! It perfectly fit this particular recipe but I can see that it also goes with many other dishes. For example, I made pasta salad the next day for lunch and sprinkled some of my almond parmesan. It was oh so good. I'm going to have to make the original pecan version too. It must be delicious.

I modified her recipe to make almond parmesan as follows. I omitted the pecan, reduced the amount of the nutritional yeast and olive oil by half, and added salt to taste. 

Do you have favorite butternut squash recipes?

* I made this pasta the following way. First, I steamed the butternut squash and mashed it. I put some aside for babyfood. Then, I thinned out the rest of the mashed butternut squash in a pan with water and coconut milk over medium heat, and added nutritional yeast and other seasonings. yum.

baby "room"

So this is how it feels like to be inside the baby "room" 

time to take a nap...

Baby food - 8 & 9 months old

I wrote about what Baby and I ate most of the days of the last month when we had the vegan month of food event, which you can see it here. And here's the list of the new foods Baby tried during his 8 and 9 months.

8 months old
yoghurt
I know. this is not vegan. I couldn't find soy yoghurt that did not contain sugar, so I was going to wait until he was able to eat yoghurt with fruits and sugar. However, when my MIL came to visit us, she also brought her plain yoghurt (she knew we didn't have any at home). She offered us some and I thought hmm maybe it was a chance for Baby to try some since I didn't have any intention of buying dairy food.

The face he made was so cute though :) He looked as if he bit into a lemon or something because it was rather sour. Anyways, currently he's happily consuming silk soy yoghurt, the peach and mango kind. This is the only variety he can eat, since I haven't introduced other fruits yet. I give him only a portion of it at a time because I'm still reluctant to give him food with sugar.

prune juice
yes. he was constipating. casual google research told me that prune juice was effective to relieve constipation, so I gave him about a tablespoon every morning. I don't know if it worked but he liked it :)

edamame, green beans, grapes, broccoli

around this time, he started to grab his food and bring it to his mouth on his own. so the food was getting chunkier and thicker. sometimes I gave him diced foods so he could practice his pincer grasp.

well, I can tell you letting him grasp his rice will result in a huuuge mess lol

9 months old
my goal this month was to introduce beans, wheat and olive oil. I've also introduced napa cabbage.

beans
black beans and lentils were successfully introduced and Baby loved them, as seen in this baby shepherd's pie.

And we tried Natto! :)

Natto is fermented soybeans. Just like other fermented foods, it has a distinctive pungent smell. And it's sticky and slimy. you may wonder why we eat such stuff but it tastes good (perhaps if you regularly had some when you grew up) and it's good for ya.

Baby didn't like it at first but with a tiny amount of soy sauce he ate it all! I didn't want to use soy sauce yet but I admit it's hard to eat natto without any taste so a little bit should be ok. Natto is a popular food for Japanese babies in Japan.

wheat
Baby had pasta and homemade bread. For him to be able to eat pasta or bread makes it a lot easier for mama to carry snacks when we go out. yay. As I mentioned in those posts, he loves both pasta and bread, especially the bread.

[vegan mofo day 30] baby avocado & broccoli pesto-style pasta and conclusion

This is a pasta dish I made for Baby the other day - the avocado & broccoli pesto-style pasta! The photo doesn't do it justice but the actual pasta has this beautiful green hue from the avocado. With some sprinkles of salt, this will make a tasty meal for adults too. I think I'll have the adult version for my lunch someday.

Last night's meal was a collection of leftovers. The stuffed eggplant that I took home from the farmhouse dinner, the seared tofu, chickpea salad and corn from the previous night, and some rice. Hubby prepared this dinner so I didn't have to do anything :)

This concludes my veganmofo posts this year! phew. With two posts that covered two days, I've managed to write for every single day of the month! yay. I didn't stick to my theme for the last week (because we had guests), but I hope I was able to show you that one could eat a variety of tasty and satisfying vegan food even on a budget. And I hope you've enjoyed seeing a glimpse of what a vegan mama feeds to her baby. At first I was going to just list what Baby and I had but for almost each meal I made, I had something I wanted to say. I'm actually surprised that I have so much to say about the food I make!

Thank you so much for reading my vegan mofo posts. I'm sorry I couldn't visit your blog. I have, though, a full intention of reading all other vegan mofo posts even after September ends, so I may surprise you by leaving you some comments several months later. hehe.

My blog will go back to regular crafting and Mochi related posts. I hope you'll stick around, especially if you are either a) a crafter, b) a vegan mama or dad, or c) a crazy cat lady (or dude). If not I hope to see you at the next year's vegan mofo! Thank you and have a great week.

[vegan mofo day 28 & 29] Chinese takeout and seared tofu

Day 28
We had a Chinese takeout

We shared several meals but I had Mapo Tofu over rice and vegetable fried rice (asked to leave out the egg). For some reasons I'm fond of those Chinese takeout boxes. They're so cute :) We don't see this type of Chinese takeout very much in Japan so my parents also enjoyed it. Takeout is great especially with a little one.

Day 29

The omnivores ate some non-vegan main meal so I made seared tofu steak-style. I didn't add any seasonings, just splashed some soy sauce before eating, but it tasted great. The side dishes were chickpea salad, corn on the cob, sauteed asparagus (not shown in the picture) and rice, made by my mother. Baby had the same seared tofu but he hasn't tried any of the ingredients in the side dishes yet, so he had broccoli and carrots instead. I thought the amount of rice was too much but he ate it all! I can't believe how much he eats now. The amount increased a lot even during this month alone. It's fun to be able to see the changes in his diet from the pictures I took and for that also I'm glad I joined vegan mofo this year.

[vegan mofo day 27] the farmhouse

Since my parents kindly agreed to watch Baby, my husband and I went out to have a lovely dinner. I know we're on a budget but we've been doing pretty well so far and I think we deserve some treats ;-)

Husband chose the farmhouse because they were one of the few who offered a vegan option, and it did not disappoint. The staff was friendly and explained to me that their stuffed eggplant was vegan. Ah. The joy of offering something off the menu without changing anything! It's probably not a big deal for big city people in this day and age but the places where I've been in the past few years, this is very rare.

We shared their farmer salad with the non-vegan items on the side so husband could eat them.

Their food tasted really fresh. I'd probably prefer a little bit stronger (saltier) flavor to my taste, but it might have been better this way so we could enjoy the real taste of fresh ingredients. I love eggplants and this eggplant meal was delicious, fun and filling. The atmosphere was great with the dim light (hence not a stellar photo. sorry). It's been a while since I dined in the midst of the city's bustle. I didn't miss it so much but it's nice to experience city's liveliness once in a while. All in all I really had a good time :)

The farmhouse

300 Delaware Street

Kansas City, MO