This story actually happened a couple of months ago. I thought it was comical so here it goes my silly story of how I burned carrots. As I mentioned before I started making homemade baby
food for Owain. It's pretty easy. The first few foods I cooked for him was yams (his favorite), green beans,apple sauce. I have been slowly introducing a new food to him every few weeks. I thought the next vegetable would be carrots. So I went to the farmers market and bought a bundle of carrots. Then I peeled them,sliced them into little pieces and got the pan ready to steam them.
For those of you that don't know me is I am not a huge cook. I am more of a baker. Before ever making Owain's baby food I never really cooked vegetables. When I ate vegetables it was usually because someone (like Owain's daddy) would cook them or I would just eat them raw. My point I am trying to make is that this was my first time using the steamer.
I filled the pan with water just enough that the water was touching the steamer. Then I placed the carrots in the steamer turned the burner on high and walked away.
what was my mistake?While the carrots were burning/cooking I was distracted by Owain. We were playing on that blanket in the living room. I kept checking on the carrots in between our play time and everything seemed to be fine.
So I thought. I did keep smelling a burning smell. I checked the carrots again and they looked fine. I figured something in the burner was making the burning smell. My carrots didn't look burned. They still had a few minutes left in the steamer so played with Owain some more.
After a few minutes I went to get the carrots off the stove.
Uh oh something wasn't right? The carrots looked fine until I tried to get them out of the steamer and they were completely burned on the bottom and so was the pan. All the water that was in the pan evaporated and the pan was completely black!
So what were my two mistakes? I will tell you my first was having the burner on high and my second mistake was I forgot to put a lid on the pan. Whoops. Needless to say Owain didn't get to try carrots on this particular day and It took a couple of days of soaking for the pan and lots of elbow grease to get it clean.
I defiantly learned from this. I learned burnt carrots smell really good! and when steaming vegetables you don't need the burner on high and never forget the lid.
Needless to say the second time I steamed carrots for Owain was a success. Carrots are now one of Owain's favorite foods. It's all about trial and error. I figure by the time Owain is a toddler I will be an expert on cooking vegetable.
Since then Owain has had bananas and avocado. He just had his first food allergy yesterday. For lunch we gave him some avocado with a little bit of rice cereal. This was his second time having avocado. The first time he just had a few bites and shortly after that I noticed he had a few red bumps around his mouth. Owain has really sensitive skin so I just took note of it. I wasn't sure if it was avocado or something else. Now I know it's avocado. Three hours after his lunch he had red bumps all over his little mouth.
I called ask a nurse and she said "since he doesn't have a fever,isn't breathing funny and doesn't' seem to be making him uncomfortable to just keep an eye on it" So I did and I am happy to report this morning when Owain woke up most of the red bumps are gone. Woohooo! No more avocado until Owain turns one then we will try it again.
