A Blur (and Baby Food)

It has been a while since my last post, probably because not much has been happening since then. 

Everything moves very quickly from day-to-day, and I admit I have not been as attentive to those details as I should be in my constant half-alert state.

In recent times, I've been in a workout slump.  I have been pretty good about keeping up frequency (4-5 times a week), though they are pretty short bouts.  I was going at a pretty high intensity for a while, but I ramped it down a little due to burnout.  So there has been a lot of elliptical-ing in front of The Chew, and when I do get that run to Insanity workout in, I feel it the next day.

I've taken up daily tea/coffee.  It started out as a terrible (light) frappuccino ritual to reward myself for fighting traffic in my sleepy stupor, but in an effort to take better care of myself, it is now plain lattes or green smoothies.  I've also been doing a slightly better job at sticking to salads or homemade stuff over other indulgences.  I figure any little things will help me feel better.

We also got a toaster oven, which has been helpful during this lonnnnng summer when I want to roast stuff for both the adults and the little one.  I only make a portion of the food that Baby Tuesday eats (if you don't count milk...) and fully admit that the organic baby food companies do the rest.  It's not really a lot of work, but for some reason, it takes a long time.  I was buying organic stuff, peeling, washing, steaming, and puree-ing.  Then, I started cooking mashed stuff with couscous and all... but roasting has been great because I can pretty much just scoop straight from the vegetable and mix it with rice sometimes. 

He plays with cans in the kitchen.

At almost 11 months, I've been able to offer a bigger variety of foods, and he's generally able to self-feed everything except the gloppy stuff.  We did work on using a spoon, and he was doing well with it for a while, but then he started tossing it all the time and I quit.  He loves pita bread hummus sandwiches (only tomato hummus) ripped into small pieces, shredded cheese, egg yolks, and these little melty things that I started making when I got tired of buying those yogurt things in the stores. These are made out of coconut butter and whatever I feel like puree-ing (berries, squashes, etc.), mostly because he won't eat avocados or actual yogurt, plus I love having jars of coconut butter around.

I bought a piping bag after this...

Now that I've been spending slightly more time in the kitchen, I do realize how much I missed it and hope that I will have more opportunities as the baby grows and the weather cools (because let's face it... I'm an oven person).

To end this random post, I wanted to mention that I tried this pumpkin Quest Bar that I saw as I was walking by the GNC that's very close to my work.  I was surprised by the color of the bar and was turned off by the little pieces that fell everywhere, but overall, I liked it.  It has a sweet coating and decent interior that is reminiscent of Fall.