Spicy Baby Food

I've been offering non-bland food to Maddie sometimes. And she usually eats it.

The other day we were at Biryani House (my favorite Indian restaurant and cheap!) and I gave her some tastes of the dishes. She reacted a little bit, but she wasn't upset. I think she's happy to get to try what she's seeing everybody else eating. And I try and do that as much as I can.

A couple days ago I put turmeric, basil and pepper in her peas. Peas are kind of gross looking when you put them through the cuisinart. She ate tons of this combo.

It kind of makes sense to me that the whole bland food for babies thing is nonsense. It's not like they know the difference. And the only way their going to think it's normal and not fight it when they're older is if they're eating it right from the get go. I'm not suggesting that you feed them fiery hot spiced food, or that you don't adjust their food based on how they react. But I think feeding them bland food is boring, boring and it might just set up a picky eater for later. Especially in our house, where we don't normally eat much that's bland at all.

Yesterday I fed her yogurt and she had this really adorable expression. It was a little tart for her and she only ate a couple bites. I wish I had a picture of that face. So cute!

Burn, Baby Burn

My life "theme" has recently changed. It used to be "If it doesn't burn, it's not food." My current theme is "Food is a vehicle for hot sauce."

I love hot, spicy things. I eat some form of very hot spice around twice a day. I've gotten to the point where I use hot sauce like other people use oil and vinegar on salads or ketchup on eggs. Most of it's just not that hot any more.

We were in the city last weekend and we walked by a local grocery store. Why not buy some groceries here? (as opposed to getting back to the east bay and doing it.) So we did. And they had new hot sauces! So I bought four new bottles, and two of them are very hot! I love that.

I'm really enjoying learning about the various spicy peppers. Each one affects your mouth in a different way. Some will slowly ramp up to their peak of hotness, others will be very very hot quickly and fade away just as quick, others will only affect the tip of your tongue, while others still will only affect the back of your mouth. Yum.

Yesterday I finally got around to bottling my new beer. I'm very excited to drink it. I realized that I get so excited when I brew beer that I have historically felt the need to use hops in all the phases of brewing. And I think for my beer tastes now, it's not such a good fit. This might explain my lack of home brewing recently. But this beer only has finishing hops and has lots of blueberries. I'm guessing it's going to have only a slightly more complicated taste that bud, or something along those lines. And that might just be perfect for me now.

Oh, and as a side (for those of you who may be following this blog) I've lost 15 lbs since starting these CRON angled food changes during tax season. It's very exciting. (And I really haven't had a headache in many, many months too - thankfully.) 8 more to go and I'm done.