Food Mill
This past weekend, our fantabulous friends, Kim & Brian, hosted a great cookout/baby shower for us. (THANKS!) One of the gifts we received was a food mill - something I really should have used for Sarah when she was transitioning to real food. Hindsight, I know.

Anyway, at dinner Sunday night I decided to see how well the food mill worked. It is quite the contraption - very simple, in fact. It's like a mini meat grinder or potato ricer. It has a bowl shape at the top so you can use it instead of dirtying another bowl and comes with it's own little baby spoon. You simply drop some food in (I put in some green beans and chicken), turn the handle while pushing up on the base, and Voila! The end product is not as icky looking as you might think - it does not resemble your typical baby food. And, of course, it tastes just like it did before it was mushed up.

Well, all this experimenting piqued Sarah's interest. She was pecking at the food on her plate, but when she saw this she excalimed "I want to try!" So, I handed the food mill to Pete. She took the spoon and gobbled it all up. "I want some more." Okay! Well, she ended up eating all her chicken, beans and some dressing! As wonderful as that is, I just hope this won't end up as a "requirement" for cleaning her plate. But it'll be a while before Christopher can even eat real food. Maybe by then she'll become a full member of the Clean Plate Club. ;)