Amuse bouche... Weaning hols
Awhole side of the Italian supermarket aisle was dedicated to baby food. Jars and jars and jars of the stuff, a lot more than you’d get at home, Nadine thought.
It was funny that in a country so devoted to its food, there was so much processed food for infants. Nadine wouldn’t be buying any, no matter how hard Malachy tried to convince her.
He might think that two weeks of jarred food wouldn’t kill seven-month-old Laila, but Nadine wasn’t convinced. “It takes two weeks to create a habit,” she told Malachy, secretly smug to repeat one of his training mantras back to him.
“I could undo all my good weaning work in one fell swoop, and then we’d go home and she’d be one of those babies who won’t eat any real food and has all-beige dinners and ugh,” Nadine said with a shudder.
It wasn’t just the thought of what such a diet would do to her little darling, but also just how mortifiying it would be to take out jars of food in front of her other weaning friends.
No, Nadine was sticking to her guns. The reason they’d rented an apartment instead of going to a hotel was so that she could cook Laila’s food, and that’s what she was doing.
Nadine headed for the veg section, pushing a sleeping Laila in the buggy while Malachy pushed the trolley. She loaded in the carrots, spinach, sweet peppers and avocados, all Laila’s favourites.
Throw in some chicken or fish and you had a decent baby meal, albeit a clothes-staining one. Brightly coloured meals weren’t an issue for Nadine at home.
It was a pity the apartment had no washing machine. They hadn’t rented an apartment before and when Nadine read, “clothes-washing facilities”, she hadn’t expected a washboard and a sink.
She was trying hard not to let this spoil things, though the constant rain didn’t help. It was hard to get all of Laila’s cute little summer dresses dry on a clothes horse, so Nadine had resigned herself to leaving her in babygros.
Even the babygros were looking a bit grubby, though, what with the difficulty of scrubbing out the spinach and butternut squash stains on the washboard. It didn’t feel entirely like a holiday.
She picked up a potato. It looked so bland and blameless, Nadine thought, wondering what harm a diet of mash would do her daughter for the rest of the fortnight.