With Lucy we bought all of her mushy pureed baby food in neat packages and she gobbled them down.  Very convienient but a new day is dawning in our house with the twins now eating baby food and not just milk.  This time around I am making all the baby veggie/fruit foods and it has given me a lot of time to think about food, where it comes from, where it goes and what’s in it (I feel like I think about food all the time with the 1000 extra calories I have to take in daily to nurse the twins- not at all as easy as I would have expected extra eating to be due to all the kids around here!).  Anyway, its been far much less expensive, not too much extra work at all, much less wasteful and tastes incredible.  I cannot believe we never did this with Lucy.  The proof is in the way these two vacuum it down at dinner time.  If you’re free I could use an extra hand at feeding time, but Zoey might eat it off!  It sure is a sight feeding two this stuff at once.

I am so glad I am making all these baby foods now, but the hidden bonus is all the time I am cooking away I think about how easy it is for us to get food, for example (at least in our very priveledged country and with my fortunate circumstances).  I mean, walk into Wegmans, pick up an apple and put it into a bag.  Half the time I couldn’t even tell you exactly what I paid for that apple, never mind the travels its been on.  Making sweet potatoes  yesterday got me thinking of where they came from and what kinds of resources had to be used to grow, process and get them to that neat pile in Wegmans.  Does the $3 I paid for them really reflect the impact on the soil, cleaning and processing methods and transportation costs and impacts?  I really don’t think we appreciate our food like we would if we farmed it ourselves or could at least see the journey from seed to what we buy on a display in a store.  Things are so disconnected now and there are so many decisions regarding our foods we don’t have control over because of this process now.   It seems kind of scary/overwhelming to think of these things with something as intimate as what you put into your kids’ bodies.  What about where those veggie scraps go?  Lord knows they don’t break down in landfills, where they probably end up.  Being biodegradable means nothing if air never reaches those lonely sweet potato peels.  Nevermind a compost pile when you live in a town with a rat problem.  Geez, what a snowball of worries.  The funny thing is that while this is on my mind, it seems to be other’s too.  I wish I and others thought about it more.

Well, there are costs to living here, on this Earth for sure and I have no answers.  I think though that if we think about what’s on our plate a little more than what kind of dressing will go with the salad sitting there it might bring to light the true cost of our food.  We are trying to make a conscious effort to eat more healthy, fresh and local foods and also organics.  I am thankful that making baby food has become more than just cooking, blending and freezing for me.  At least I can be prepared to talk to my kids about choices they have control over when they are gulping it down.