In the Kitchen

Happy Monday, friends! Hope you all had a great weekend. I wanted to first thank you all for your sweet comments & congratulations on the last post, we are so excited about adding another baby girl to the family!! We appreciate all of your kind words so much, it means so much to us & we can’t thank you enough for all of your support & kindness on the blog over the years! 🙂

Eloise has moved from eating baby food purees to eating mostly all of the things we eat.  I have found myself scrolling through old posts now that she is trying all sorts of new foods, trying to think of what Harper ate at this age & always looking for new things to make. So I wanted to share a few things that she is eating now, at 8.5 months with almost four teeth on top & three on bottom.

Although I have a major sweet tooth & could probably eat pancakes/french toast/cake for every meal, I do my best to limit the amount of sugar that the kids eat. Harper loves sweets too, but more than anything she likes fruit. She can eat an entire bowl of fruit mixed together, most mornings for breakfast she eats bananas, raspberries or strawberries, and blueberries, either with cereal or a waffle. I have been buying Kashi 7 grain frozen waffles for a few years now & we still love eating them almost every day. Eloise eats them for breakfast too, I was breaking them up for her into pieces but now I just give her a half of one & she will chew on it. It’s really messy, but she also loves bananas & raspberries for breakfast, or applesauce pouches. Harper is like a little puppy, she waits to see what’s left in the pouch after Eloise eats it & gets excited to eat the rest. I also give Eloise the little yums teething biscuits, they’re also really messy, but she really loves them, she eats the banana + pumpkin ones & they seem to really feel good on her teeth.
 

For lunch, we eat a lot of pasta or dinner leftovers, the girls love chicken nuggets & steam-in-a-bag veggies, and sometimes I make macaroni in a mug for them. We cut up sweet potatoes & bake them with a little olive oil & sea salt, they are always a huge hit. I also like to make chicken noodle soup on Sundays & they will eat it throughout the week. Everything in the soup is so tender that Eloise can eat all of it & doesn’t have to do much chewing at all. We’ve also given her scrambled eggs & she loved them! Our pediatrician mentioned they don’t worry about eggs/peanut butter under a year any more, but if you are concerned please be sure to check with your doctor first.

You can find a few of our other food posts here & here. And please be sure to share what your little ones are loving in the kitchen!

It’s a huge milestone for babies to be eating what we eat, it makes everything so much easier & is always fun to see them try new foods. Harper’s favorite snack is whole fruit bars, the strawberry & the lime ones are our favorites. I swear the lime ones almost taste like a margarita! 😉 Eloise loves to nibble on them & we get the best sour faces from her after each bite. And if it’s cold outside, Harper insists on wearing a hat while she eats her popsicle. Why? “Because it’s cold & I don’t wanna freeze my booty off!!”

As far as my crockpot carnitas went the other day, they were really good!! After looking at a few different recipes & using just what I had on hand, I trimmed a 2 lb. Boston butt roast & cut it into a few smaller pieces. I added it to the crockpot with 2 tbsp of vegetable oil & 1/2 tbsp of the following: chili powder, cumin, onion powder, cayenne pepper & salt. I coated the roast in the oil & mixture, then juiced an entire orange over the top of it all. I cooked it on low for 8 hours, then shredded it & squeezed some fresh lime over the top at the end. We just served it on tortilla shells with some white mexican cheese. It was so easy & really delicious, I can’t wait to make them again. 
Best of all? The leftovers made amazing carnitas quesadillas!!! Although cooking them went a little something like this…
Me: (prepping) Ah these quesadillas are going to be so good!!
Me: (starting to cook them in the pan) I am so hungry. I can’t wait to eat these.
Harper: Mom! I have to go poop!!
Me: Ok I’m coming!!
Help her out of the baby gates so she can get into the bathroom. Run back to the kitchen.
Me: (cooking the quesadillas) These smell so good. And they look so good. And I am so ready to eat.
Harper: Mom!! I’m pooping AND MY LEG FELL IN THE TOILET!!!!!!!!!!!!
Me: (running into the bathroom to help) I’m coming! Don’t move!!
 Quesadillas: We’re burning. We’re still burning. Annnnnd we’re burnt. 
Me: Fuck.
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  1. Our little boy is just a couple of weeks younger than Eloise and he is just now starting to eat what we eat too. I initially wanted to do the Baby Led Weaning but after talking to my pediatrician (and him recommending we do purees just to help him actually get food in his mouth) we haven't done much with it. That is until this weekend. He is getting so much better with his pincher grasp so I think we should be good to go with feeding him what we eat. Such a game changer especially when we eat out at restaurants. And this little thing has 6 teeth already! Hope you have a great week!

    XOXO,
    Summer Ann
    http://www.simplysummerann.com

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  2. Those quesadillas sound delicious! We will have to give that recipe/idea a try. We love our tacos around here, that is for sure. It is tough cooking with a toddler running around. RIP yummy quesadilla. It is extra sad when something burns while you are pregnant…so sad (I'm 19 weeks pregnant).

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  3. I always love to see that other kids eat chicken nuggets and mac & cheese, too (in moderation, of course!). And her leg in the toilet! My 15-month-old stuck her hand in the toilet yesterday while I was running her bath. Her fingers made it to her mouth before I could stop her. There was gagging and f-bombs galore. So gross.

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  7. Omg this had me giggling. My son turned two on Friday and is starting to really show his personality. He's barely talking but is a total hoot. I can't wait for sentences and his personality really coming through in what he says. Congrats on #3!

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  9. Oh man your quesadilla story is hilarious!!! My 2 1/2 year old still isn't potty trained but stories like this make me OK with it, haha!!

    Thanks for sharing your meals with us! I am always on the look out for easy, yummy foods to feed the girls. My girls love veggies in a bag, too, We also eat a lot of squeeze applesauce, popcorn (they're obsessed), sweet potatoes, nutrigrain bars, waffles, bananas and chicken nuggets!

    – Sarah http://www.thefrugalmillionaireblog.com

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  14. How did you introduce foods to your daughter and get her excited about them? We are having the hardest time introducing new flavors. She only seems to like apples, prunes, trawberry/banana/peaches, pears/spinach, and pears/oatmeal/cinnamon mixtures. Everything else she purses her lips for. 🙁

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  15. Haha aww man!! I bet those quesadillas were going to be delicious! You could've called them extra toasted. 😉

    I would make Elliot a lot of sopitas (Mexican star or alphabet soup), you just brown the stars or letters in a little pot just for a bit, add some water and blend a tomato and add to soup and throw in some broccoli, peas or whatever veggie you want. It comes out like rice but a bit soupier. It's so good! And so easy. I would make it with different veggies and I would add some chicken in there!

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  16. Do you have any tips on introducing solids to babies? My daughter is 8 months old and I'm having so much trouble getting her to want to eat solids. We haven't introduced as much as we'd like because we're having to much difficulty. She purses her lips and turns her head to the side before we can even get it in her mouth. She loves pears, strawberries, bananas, peaches, apples, prunes and spinach. Everything else she's not a huge fan of. Any tips would be so appreciated!!

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  17. I can't stop laughing at cooking and helping Harper go potty at the same time! We're beginning the potty training for our 2.5 year old now and I we have had some pretty laughable moments so far. I wish I had food ideas to share but our 10 month old doesn't have teeth yet so we're still at the puree soft foods stage.

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  18. Why do kids always wait until you are in the kitchen cooking to decide they have to poop?!? Happens all the time here!

    It's been a little while since I have fed a baby (due with my 2nd in April), but my daughter is a few months younger than Harper and we have been on a panini kick lately. We love broccoli, cheese and turkey on sour dough bread from the Publix bakery. Turkey, swiss, spinach and tomato is another favorite, and a panini press is great for quesadillas too (though it won't help prevent the burning when your toddler has to poop 🙂 )!! And I have been craving stir fry loaded with fresh veggies lately, so we now have stir fry Sunday and make enough for leftovers during the week, yum!

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  20. One of my 2-year-old's favorite foods right now is hummus! I let her try it when she was much younger but just hadn't bought it in a while. But we were at a restaurant one night recently and I let her have some of mine and she dug right in! She loves dipping pretzels in it. I'm also going to try a tortilla-hummus-cucumber slice roll-up to see if she likes that. She cried this morning when she realized I packed hummus for her lunch… she wanted it for breakfast!

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  24. Your quesadilla story sounds a lot like how my grilled cheese story usually goes. Why do they always have to go #2 when something is on the stove?

    Side note: If you like avocados, next time chop them and top the carnitas with them + tomatoes= heaven!

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  26. HAHA! That story is too funny, I did something similar with a pot of rice — how easy is it to burn rice?! Apparently really easy when you have a toddler that is potty training. I'm excited to try your recipe! 🙂 Harper is getting so big and adorable, just like Eloise.

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  27. LOL, I am laughing so hard as I so relate to this EVERY single night at dinnertime! What is it about prepping food or trying to sit down to eat that causes a toddler to have to use the restroom!

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  32. I'm totally jealous that your little one has 5 more teeth than mine who is twice her ago. She can still eat most stuff but I'm always cautious because I never know what those little gums can handle versus some teeth.

    Lesson learned, remove quesadillas from burner when helping kid poop.

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  36. Wow great post! I've been looking for post like this. My little girl is almost 7 months and loves feeding herself the spoon with puréed veggies and fruits. Can't wait for her to eat less puréed and more solids, I feel like it won't be so much work especially since she prefers fresh not thawed out foods. Thanks for the tips always!

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  38. We just started potty training my son on Friday and so far it has been the most stressful thing although he is doing so well so far…if I didn't have patience before this parenting task I do now…

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  46. Haha…aww. I would've probably still scraped out & eaten the stuff inside with a spoon. But maybe I'm just lazy like that?…

    Love your everyday-stuff-type posts : ) .

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