Fabulous First Five

Unfortunately I didn't get "in progress" photos of these foods, and the "after"photos aren't that great because I took them on my phone. I do have a camera, but I gave it to my husband to print something off and I have no clue where it currently is. I'll have to bug him when he gets home, but for the moment this shall have to do.

Yeah, I'm not much of a photographer.

From the top, clockwise, we have peas, carrots, yellow lentil/rice cereal, mango, and pork chop.

I also didn't really pay attention to amounts when I was making these. I will try to do better in the future. Promise.

Peas

I used frozen peas for this one (easy, remember).

• Pour frozen peas into saucepan. 
• Add about 1/2 inch of water (use judgement). 
• Place lid on pot and turn heat to high. 
• When peas are sufficiently steamed pour entire contents of pot into the blender. 
• Blend. Add more water if needed (I didn't)
• Cool

Carrots

• Peal carrots and cut into chunks. 
• Cook and blend like the peas.

Yellow Lentil and Rice Cereal

• Mix approximately equal amounts of  yellow lentils and rice in strainer. 
• Rinse thoroughly
• Place in covered saucepan with plenty of water. I used too small a saucepan the first time so part way through I moved it to a bigger pot so I had to refill the water less often. Regardless, I had to top up the water several times during the cooking as the grains absorbed it. 
• Boil until the lentils are soft and the rice is falling apart. I turned the heat down partway through.
• Pour the entire mixture into the blender. If there is too much water in the pot you may want to leave it uncovered and allow some of the water to evaporate first. 
• When it was blended the mixture had a consistency similar to a thin cream soup. As it cooled the mixture thickened to the consistency of a thick and cream soup. 

Mango

Just read the pea recipe. I used frozen chunks for this.

Pork Chop

• Place pork chop in pan (I used electrical frying pan) with water. 
• Boil
• Once it is cooked, chop meat into pieces. 
• Put meat and some of the cooking water into the blender. Blend to a rough puree (At this point the taste and consistency reminded me quite a bit of canned tuna for some reason.

All Recipes

• Once mixture is cool, spoon/pour into ice cube trays. 
• Tap trays to eliminate bubbles and gaps. 
• Freeze. 
• Once frozen, pop out of trays and store in freezer ziplocs. 

Today I took out two cubes to feed the P. The peas defrosted beautifully. The lentil and rice cereal developed a very.... weird consistency. I had to add some warm water and mix it up, but it still looked almost curdled. It did, however, taste fine, and the P ate it without more than normal difficulty. That recipe will need some more work apparently. 

All of these were a pretty easy afternoon's work, and resulted in about five and a half ice cube trays of food. At the moment P is eating about 2 cubes a day, so at sixteen cubes a tray we have over a months worth of food (assuming her appetite doesn't increase).