Cooking for two

First off, I am not complaining. My wife carried the brunt of feeding-related woes for the first 6 months of our baby’s life by exclusively breastfeeding. But starting solids turned cooking into a less exciting chore than it used to be. You either end up eating boring baby-appropriate meals or you prepare two separate meals all the time.

Now, we just hit the age where we are comfortable introducing more complex meals. I want to share how exciting it has been. For anyone currently in the thick of it, we see you. It does get better.

Our son is just shy of 9 months old now and we’ve been doing baby-led weaning since he turned 6 months. We’ve been careful because our son had some issues with food intolerances and my wife has been on an elimination diet for almost half a year. At its peak, she was avoiding dairy, soy, eggs, wheat, and tree nuts. If nothing else, it taught us immense respect for people with allergies. It’s been a journey to say the least.

By now, we have reintroduced all but milk and egg back into her diet. Cooking with these restrictions is already so much easier than it used to be. However, after eating unsalted food for months, over-seasoned with pepper and paprika, I am desperate to eat like a proper adult again.

So recently, I thought of cooking a tiny baby batch alongside a grown-up batch of food. The key is to make essentially the same meal in parallel, with mostly the same ingredients but skipping the ones that the baby can’t eat, like salt.

The first time I did it, I made an Argentine Puchero recipe from my mother-in-law. It’s just boiling sweet potatoes, summer squash, celery, carrots, green onions, and corn with beef in broth for 30–45 minutes. For the baby, I just made a small pot with water instead of broth. He loved it. So I was eager to do it again.

The second attempt is what actually prompted me to write this story. It was so fun that I want to share our success!

I planned a vegetarian mushroom risotto. It’s a pretty great dish but it had a few things a baby can’t have (like white wine) and a couple my wife still can’t have (like parmesan cheese).

I made two versions: One for us without the cheese, with butter replaced with margarine, and wine with broth and a dash of (rice) vinegar. And one for the baby where I replaced the

  • broth and wine with water,
  • replaced minced garlic with garlic powder, and
  • left out the salt, tamari, and butter

I can’t stress enough how cute it was to have a big, normal pot and a baby-sized pot next to it.

Both turned out great. The baby one was as bland as you can imagine but it looked and felt like actual risotto.

And our son loved it. He really got his hands in there stuffing his face and kept asking for more. He had me laughing at times flicking his hands to get the sticky rice off his tiny fingers, flinging pieces through the entire kitchen.

I think he had a great time. Mushrooms for the first time, risotto for the first time. Another way of having rice. And above all, I think he really likes eating “the same” thing we’re eating.

I’m really happy with how this experiment turned out. Cooking two batches of almost the same thing is a lot easier than managing multiple different dishes. It also makes planning so much easier. I will keep trying different recipes and share any that were fun.