The scene at our house during lunch a few weeks ago looked something like this: one little man sat in a green plastic booster seat, grinning a one-toothed chipmunk grin; hands, arms, face, bib, and food tray smeared in a thin crust of dried-up beige gruel. I sat across from him, wielding a little pink spoon, my frazzled hair escaping from a pony tail.

“Here you go pal!” I would cry in my best excited-about-cereal voice and then swoop the spoon towards him. This was the point in our lunch ritual when I dearly wanted my kid to open his mouth and delicately slide the (expensive, organic, iron-fortified, all natural) rice cereal into his mouth and swallow. Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do? Instead, he regularly gave me his best defence of waggling arms, dodging head and efforts to grab hold of the slimy pink spoon.

Rice cereal was our first (and is our longest running) attempt at solids with our little dude, and the process has never been smooth. Mindful of what we’ve read in the health nurse handouts—that our job was to present healthy food choices, and his job was to choose which foods and how much of those to eat—I have always tried my best not to pin his arms down and sneak in at least ONE little spoonful of food.

Because our boy didn’t show much interest in our early attempts at solid food, it took us a while to begin regular mealtimes in earnest, but over the weeks things have improved. We have discovered that our son will actually eat things. That is, he will eat nutritionless baby mum-mums, and of course he’s always had breast milk, the ever-popular all night snack food. In an effort to slowly move his caloric intake away from mostly mama’s milk without replacing such a nutritious diet with the empty calories of the mum-mum variety, I turned to the book Better Baby Food, by Daina Kalnins and Joanne Saab. A Canadian publication written by registered dieticians, it assured me that with the recipes supplied in the book, I could get my baby eating real food.

Better Baby Food covers breastfeeding, formula feeding, baby’s first solid foods, table foods, toddler foods, along with chapters on food safety, allergies and general nutrition. A lot of the information in the book is similar to that given out at our local public health units, but I did learn a couple of new things that I hadn’t already heard elsewhere. For example, did you know that in Canada, dairy cows can not be given antibiotics or Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH)? Our beef cattle may have BGH, but in the States, their dairy cows may receive it too. It was refreshing to be reading a book with a Canadian point of view.

The chapter on general nutrition was the one I found the most interesting and educational, as I have never been the type to know much about my food. I do know a few things about it—that chocolate is a delicious but not necessarily nutritious choice for a mama’s lunch, and that coffee is not actually considered “food”—but the book taught me a lot about the finer points of carbohydrates, fats and the like, and exactly what they do. Better Baby Food is choc-a-block with nutrition information of the Health Canada Food Guide variety, and while it does cover a few alternative lifestyle choices like vegetarianism, if you are looking for some crazy new-agey cool hippy diet, this may not be the book for you.

So, having read the book does my child now eat nutritious food? As a matter of fact he does. True confession: I’ve never actually tried any of the recipes in the book yet, but I do think about the things I learned from it when I am choosing his daily foods. If you asked me why he eats more now than he did in his early weeks of solid food, I would definitely say it was time, repetition and practice that made the biggest difference. But having read Better Baby Food, I was more confident in my decisions as I chose and prepared baby foods.

Lunch at our house now looks like this: one little guy sits in his high chair with a great big six-toothed grin. He looks a bit like a cross between a prize fighter and a panda, his face smeared with delicious nutritious food. It doesn’t all get from the spoon into his mouth, but he delights in what does, and that means smiles all around the room. Maybe someday he’ll even cut back on his favourite all night snack food.

Bulgur Bean Burgers
For babies over 18 months
1 cup water
1/2 cup bulgur
1 can (540 ml) reduced-sodium black beans, drained and rinsed
2 Tbsp plain yogurt
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cumin
whole wheat buns
sliced tomato and shredded lettuce

In a small saucepan, bring water to a boil over high heat. Add bulgur, cover, reduce heat to low and cook for 10 minutes or until water is absorbed and bulgur is tender. Set aside. In bowl, mash beans with yogurt until almost smooth. Stir in bulgur, allspice, cinnamon, and cumin. Pack mixture into 1/2-cup (125 ml) dry measures or desired size. Place each on a plate, pressing to flatten. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or for up to 2 days. Spray each side of bean patties with nonstick cooking spray. Heat a nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add patties, in batches as necessary, and cook, turning once, for about 8 minutes or until golden brown and heated through.

Yogurt Sauce
2/3 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup finely shredded carrot
1/2 cup finely shredded cucumber

In a small bowl, combine yogurt, carrot and cucumber. Place each patty on a bun; top with yogurt sauce, tomato and lettuce.

When not mashing up bananas or playing with blocks, Zoe Hartley Carter builds websites for a living. Visit web link.