Today, I made a nice sit down dinner and we ate at the table as a family for the first time in a long time. I can't even remember the last time we ate at the table, but I can tell you for sure that it was before Alice was born. I made individual turkey meatloaf's in a muffin pan, cinnamon carrots, peas and red potatoes. Alice had a half meatloaf and a little bit of each veggie. She also had a bit of pumped breastmilk. I just landed a new job for the first time since I had Alice, so I am a bit new to pumping, thus the tiny amount.
Besides being the first time we ate at the table as a family, it was also really the first time that we let Alice go wild with feeding herself. Normally, we would have given her a few bits to choose from, but today we let her have access to her whole plate! She did wonderfully! I was so proud. A bit ended up on the ground (a mix of missing her mouth and deliberately trying to feed the doggies). For the most part though she would pick up a pea in her fingers and pop it in her mouth then pick up a piece of meatloaf and in the mouth it went! All in all a relatively mess-free event.
Daddy was super hungry tonight after only having 450 calories to eat for the whole day, thus the big plate! I ate about half of this. I put our potatoes in the stand mixer to mash them, but I left Alice's cubed to make them easier for her to eat on her own.
Alice's Approval Rating
For the most part, Alice really liked her dinner. She ate the peas and carrots happily and loved her turkey meatloaf. However was is not so into the red potatoes. She only ate them if I offered them to her, but ignored them (or tried giving them to the pups!) otherwise.
Daddy's Thoughts
Not too bad. It's pretty hard to get an opinion out of him, but I was told that the meatloaf could use less shallots next time, and that my mashed potatoes just can't live up to his mom's :) Besides that (and the salty carrots...see below) he enjoyed it and cleaned his plate.
How did I do?
I am happy that I made a nice meal from scratch and served my daughter a lean protein and lots of veggies. But I was not so happy with the amount of salt I used. I used kosher salt in the water that I cooked the veggies in, and I used too much! I love salt, but too much is not good, especially for the little one! I may buy a steamer basket and explore steaming the veggies next time. The peas were steamed in the microwave and were not salted at all. With less salt, I would make this again.
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