The Wednesday Chef

Cooking for Hugo: A French Food Education

Hello! Don't think I've forgotten about this little series. It's just that for a while there, well, Hugo sort of went on a food strike. (In addition to the nap strike! I know.) And it was so strange and so frustrating that I sort of couldn't bring myself to write about it while I was in it. You know? He stopped wanting to eat my lovingly prepared vegetable purées, he stopped being interested in the food I made for myself and he threw everything I put in front of him to feed himself on the floor. A few times, he even reached inside his mouth after I put a spoonful of food in it and sort of clawed out the food, shrieking all the while in disgust. It was awful.

In retrospect, I think it was an unholy combination of teething and too many bottles and textural issues and also just plain babyhood and I'm very, very glad to say we seem to have worked things out. Now Hugo gets a big bottle first thing in the morning and another big one before bed, but the rest of the day, he eats three proper meals at the table. It's so satisfying and wonderful to see him digging in to whatever I put in front of him. Phew.

But some of my behavior while this was going on was giving me pause. When Hugo refused to eat something, I'd quickly prepare something else and offer to him instead. When that got thrown on the floor too, I'd look for yet another thing to give him, often resorting to buttered bread or pasta. After all, I couldn't very well let my almost 11-month old go hungry, could I? Those rules about not cooking things to order for your kids obviously were only meant for older kids, right?

Except then I was hanging out with my French girlfriend Marguerite and when I told her about what was going on and how I was dealing with it, she did one of those half double-takes backwards and shook her head gently. "Oh, no, Luisa. He refuses to eat? Then that's it. Don't make anything else for him." But, but, I protested. He's just a baby! Won't he be hungry? Won't he wake up in the middle of the night? Aren't I sort of then sending him to bed with no supper and won't I be judged cruelly for that and sent packing straight to Hades? "No! He has his evening bottle, right? He's almost 11 months old. He'll be fine." And, um, she was right.

So today, folks, I want to write about French rules for feeding children.

Cooking for Hugo: Baby Breakfast Ideas

Today I'd love to talk about baby breakfasts. The first meal of the day is such an important one and also such a fun one - your baby is (hopefully) well-rested and happy to start the day and probably already has some morning milk in his little belly and therefore isn't freaking out with hunger. The best time to experiment with new foods, I think. But am I alone in sometimes feeling uninspired about what to make?

Cooking for Hugo: Big and Little Dinner

There are thrilling developments here in the solid foods department, folks. Hugo can now eat entire fusilli all by himself (I was cutting them into little bite-size pieces until one day he reached out and grabbed a whole one, cramming it in his mouth before I could stop him) and I can slowly start making more and more meals for both the big and little people in this household instead of separate ones.

Cooking for Hugo: Culture Clash

Cultural differences, folks! So colorful, so funny, so endlessly interesting. Unless you're the mother of a hungry baby and you find your head spinning with every different answer you get about what you should feed your child.

Take, for example, the first solid food a baby should eat.

Cooking for Hugo: Baby-Led Weaning

Okay, friends, let's talk about baby-led weaning today. For those of you who don't know what baby-led weaning is, it's basically a philosophy of feeding children that says that children should be the ones who choose what they put in their mouths, not their parents. Instead of making puréed fruits and vegetables and spooning them into your baby's mouth, you put food (cooked until soft and cut into small pieces) in front of your baby and let him feed himself.

Cooking for Hugo

In early December I started feeding Hugo his first solids. Since then I've gotten so many requests to write about what I feed him that I started to realize that just one post to cover it probably wouldn't do. After all, what I feed Hugo changes every week and anyway, it turns out that the whole topic of baby food is way more complicated than I ever thought. There's a lot of ground to cover.

(Who knew? I didn't. Oof.)

It's been heartening, really - I've found navigating what to feed Hugo often very confusing, and all those requests clearly show that I'm not alone. So I've been thinking: how about a once-weekly post where I write about what I fed him this week, what's been working and what hasn't, what tips I might have figured out and what frustrations I'm currently dealing with? It would be lovely to hear what those of you with small babies are dealing with, too, as you navigate the world of solid foods with your little one.

I'll call the column, as it were, Cooking for Hugo and it'll show up here once a week. I'll hide most of it behind a jump so that those of you who are interested can click your way on in and those of you who aren't don't feel assaulted by mushy peas and carrots. It'll cover everything having to do with feeding babies, from recipes to gear to differing "philosophies" on how babies should be fed. I think it'll be fun? I hope it'll be helpful.

Let's get started. Come on in!