Intrepid Murmurings

Food Glorious Food
Well, Emma is becoming a regular food hound, finally! And since we are rather into it ourselves, we have been enjoying making up new things for her to try, and figuring out what parts of our meals we can give to her. I am having a hard time sticking to the "only introduce one food every 3-7 days" rule because it is so much easier to just give her what we are eating. Which is usually a mix of many things.
A few days ago she has had polenta, adapted from Alton Browns recipe (none of the extras, other than chicken broth), refrigerated, cut into sticks and sauted. She loved them, and sucked down two pieces rather quickly. We will definitely make this again soon, though next time I think we'll go with half water or at least low sodium broth, since it was a little saltier for her than I would have liked. And I think grilling them would be a good way to crisp them up without adding fat, though I don't think a little olive oil now and then is necessarily a bad thing...
Tonight, she enjoyed her first bit of quinoa. I had read about it on another baby led weaning site, and wanted to give it a try, since it is high in iron & protein, as well as other vitamins. We just made hers with water (ours Lonnie doctored up to be sort of a pilaf) and put it in a bowl so she could feed herself. She had a great time eating the quinoa grains and was pretty good about getting it in her mouth, though later I started helping her by mixing it with some apricot puree and giving the mixture on a spoon. She ate the whole bowl that I set out, as well as all the apricot, and some squash.
But, she also likes other things! Here are a few of them.
Emmas Top Ten Foods (for the moment):
Avocado (wedges) Applesauce (restricted somewhat due to constipating qualities) Chicken Brown Rice Congee Oatmeal and Apricots, (actually, apricots and anything) Polenta Sticks Prunes (whole dried or puree) Toast sticks (rice flour based) with shmear (usually avocado or fruit puree) Sweet Potato fries/wedges (puree will do in a pinch) Steak (only had this once so far, but it did go over well) Squash (pureed and mixed with applesauce is preferable, we call it "squapple")
Whoops, thats eleven! Note the utter lack of green vegetables (unless you count avocado)! So far peas and broccoli have not been much of a hit. I want to try spinach soon, and think I will be able to work that into things like the polenta, for instance. She tried baby carrots (whole, cooked) last night and seemed to think they were okay, but I bet she would like them pureed.
She is taking things from a spoon now, which is nice, though we still like the philosophy (and ease) of giving whole foods so we are doing that as well. Each meal usually consists of something by spoon and a couple of finger foods. She is eating solids with breakfast and dinner, and sometimes lunch or snack (that is not very established yet). For a few days there it seemed like she was not nursing enough, but in the past few days we seem to be back on track for that. She seems always willing to nurse for a few minutes, any time I offer (and often she requests it), but doesn't always have the time to hang around for a real meal. Its hard to know sometimes if its that there is no milk there (same old low supply issues) or if she is just not interested or patient enough to work for it.
She is also making a sign that is remarkably like the "milk" sign language sign, which would be awesome, but she seems to use it more as "I want", which isn't very specific. I want, I want, I want....directed towards the dog, her toys, the TV (ugh), me, or any time she is on the changing table and doesn't want to be. If I make the sign and she's in my lap she'll lunge at my boobs, so she does seem to get it in that context!