Anyway, I need your help. I'm all Bree Van De Kamp Hodge up in here, cooking each of P's meals, cleaning regularly, ironing, vacuuming, dusting. People, I'm DUSTING. Not every day, or even every week, but swiffing a thing around casually every once in awhile. I still hate cleaning, but I'll confess something - I love making baby food. I chalk it up to a childhood obsession with watching a worn out VHS copy of Baby Boom, a movie which surely has inspired you all at some point.
Surprisingly there is a bit of a lack of sites with baby food recipes on the internet. As Kristi referenced here a few months ago, by 12 months of age, American babies will have eaten about 600 jars of mass produced baby food. The figures for a baby in Western Europe is 240/year, and in Eastern Europe, 12/year. 600 jars of bland food with questionable ingredients. I know a lot of parents don't have a choice because of work and other commitments, but as I am still a
I am endevouring to starting my own baby flood blog in addition to this one in the hopes that other parents might be inspired to make their own food, or for those already making baby food, give them new ideas. My first question is - is it legal to put up some recipes from a few of the books I have if I give credit to the author? Second, and by far the most important is, what do I call said blog?
It seems strange to take up yet another responsibility when I can't even find time to respond to emails (I'm working on it!), but this is my new obsession, so I'm at least going to try it and see how it goes.
So, I'm open to suggestions on both of the points I raised above. If I go with one of the suggested titles I will award the winner a virtual pat on the head and the knowledge that I love them, if even for a moment. You can't put a price on that.
20 comments:
I am terrible at titles. How about "The Bib Blog"?
Having bought baby food in the US and the UK -- the reason US parents use more jarred food may be that the food is WAY better there. UK baby food is terrible and has forced me to make my own, even though I bought a lot in the states and only made a little.
I will definitely contribute once you get this up.
I'm hanging onto Emily's comment that jarred food is better here. I made almost all of big G's food, but lil' G mostly had jarred. She mostly didn't like pureed food, so after the first dozen or so homemade purees were rejected, I decided to let her start rejecting mass produced food instead. Now she's on finger foods, so those are mostly homemade (If cutting a banana in half and opening a can of black beans counts as homemade, that is).
Anyhoo... in response to your questions:
1) I think technically, you're not supposed to reproduce copyrighted material without permission. But the good news (for you, not for cookbook authors) is that very simple recipes might not warrant copyright protection under U.S. law. Only those with "substantial literary expression" in the form of directions and explanations that include a lot of prose are truly copyrightable. And even if a recipe is copyright protected, you're extremely unlikely to get sued over it, or even to get a nasty letter. Here's are some good guidelines:
http://www.accidentalhedonist.com/index.php/2006/08/07/copyrights_and_recipes
and here's an interesting article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/03/AR2006010300316.html
And as for a name, how about "Dinner's on Me"? I'm picturing an adorable picture of Miss P with her face totally covered in hard-won homemade food (and, bonus, that way you don't have to worry about anyone actually seeing much of her face and thus invading her privacy). And since we're all about respecting intellectual property rights here, I should attribute that to a bib I bought at Target.
"here's are some good guidelines"... geesh, that really undermines your confidence in my legal advice, doesn't it?
My sister bought me the book "The Healthy Baby Meal Planner"' by Annabel Karmel before Avery was born. Karmel is Cordon Bleu trained and she has some really great recipes for puree.
I was obsessed with pureeing for a while, but it is quite labor intensive, especially if your little one gives up on one bite of something and there's a hell of a lot more puree where that comes from...
At any rate, if you start a baby food blog, enlist me. I'm about to start a foodie blog myself and would be happy to help.
I suggest Meat Paste and Green Bean Goo as the title, which is what I told my step-mother I was going to make them for dinner next month after she specifically requested no pureed food. :)
And US jarred baby food is still pretty nasty. I've only tried giving it to them a few times and they just won't eat it save for a few fruits.
Can't wait to see the new blog. My boys are mostly on table food, but I'll still be reading.
As a non-mom, my title suggestion is "Mush - a baby food blog"
It took me a second... I'm thinking baby flood? Then the clouds cleared and it dawns on me that it's food.
Seriously they need to make spell checkers better for us exhausted busy mums.
Avocados rock... they are the perfect baby food imho. They are also a great base for most mixes, bananas are also a great base to work with. Grits, yams, eggs once the baby is 1yrs old are great too.
It will depend on your little gourmet's taste buds. I recommend being adventurous. We were and now mini will eat Indian food, Mexican food and most of what we will eat.
He hates jar food... always did. Except bananas. Good luck.
I like Mush - a baby food blog
Has a nice ring to it. It is Mush after all.
This sounds like a fun little endeavor for you! I will safely store it away in my back pocket for a rainy day.
You might want to read this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6762795.stm
before starting!
Things To Get Your Gums Around would be my choice, after your obvious title, Eat Me. :)
How about "The Puree Gourmet"?
Heh.
I also like "Mush."
I like "non-crap baby food"
How about "Food in, poo out?" No? Fine.
What about "Whirled Peas"? Too cliche?
It's all I've got.
Both times I published cookbooks for various organizations as a fundraiser, it was okay for the submitter to give, say, a Paula Deen recipe as long as she gave credit to Paula Deen. As long as you give credit, I wouldn't worry. Your intentions and effort are going to count far more than the legalities if you ever go to court over it. Which I seriously doubt you ever would.
I'm terrible at titles too but how about "Solving Whirled Peas?" or "Visualize Whirled Peas"?
I didn't read the comments before I posted (except for Emily's because it was right up top) so i didn't realize that Shadiva had the same idea! Great minds and all that.
"Give Peas A Chance"?
I like the suggestion of "The Puree Gourmet" too.
Its amazing how adventurous some babies will be with food. Spudly eats Indian dhall, curry which is at my limit of hotness tollerance and pretty much anything he can scab off our plates. There are only 2 savoury jar foods that he will eat, and a couple of sweet ones. They all taste the same to me. What's with that? Is there special "baby food flavour" they add to every single jar?
I would've loved a resource like that for baby food. I did about half store bought, and half homemade. I think making their food so early on gave me the confidence I need when trying to present them now (14 months) with new and interesting foods.
Names ... I do love "Eat Me". How about "All Mashed Up" or "Good Food, Baby!"?
Open Wide
Try It, You'll Like It
Bite-Sized
Nibbles
Gourmet-in-Training
Too Cool For Drool
I made a lot of Boo's baby food. Sweet potato was a big favourite with her. She graduated to table food pretty quickly. The Bug wants nothing to do with pureed food, which, since she only has two teeth, is a bit of a challenge at times.
Great idea. I will devour your new blog with gumption on a daily basis, because, as you know, I'm all about the mashed turnips too these days.
I have no ideas for a blog title (some great ones have already been suggested), but I'm currently working on a post about my latest two culinary endeavors for Isabella, using Annabel Karmel's latest cookbook, so reading this is great timing. I'm interested to see what you have planned.
No idea re: either of your questions, but I will certainly be all over your blog, as Bat Girl is about to start solids and I am finding it a little overwhelming. Just when we had the whole bottle thing down, something else to complicate life. (Though, truthfully, my SAHD husband will be carrying most of the food-prep burden, I suppose.)
That Baby-Led Weaning thing that someone linked to above--it sounds interesting and I've read about it elsewhere but I'm too lazy to do the research on how to do it properly. I figure I worked hard enough to feed Bat Girl the first 4 months of her life with bfing clusterfuck, I can't be assed to assimilate some "new" theory about solids feeding. Purees ho!
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