Did Someone Say "Pizza"?

How about "taco"?

Or maybe "Oatmeal"? 

Well Bryce may not exactly be saying these things, but he is eating them!

The pizza attempt was just that--an attempt. I'd recently been gifted a breadmaker through freecycle and wanted to try pizza dough one night. I purchased a gluten-free pizza crust mix (ahem, $7.39!) and threw it in the bread machine and hoped for the best.  The pizza "dough" was unusual, to say the least. It was more like sticky mashed potatoes than dough. I split it into 4 sections, froze 3, and spread one in a pizza shape on a cookie sheet using a knife. That's right--spread the "dough" with a knife. I baked it halfway, added the sauce and pepperoni and finished baking it.

Bryce has not had any bread since he was 7mos old and he's never had pizza, so I had no idea how he'd do with this. He did a nice job of picking it up and taking a nibble. He took several nibbles, picked off the pepperoni and called it a night. I tried it and it was decent. Definitely not what *I* like in a pizza crust, but plausible. The boys are well-trained and gave him lots of praise for trying. I'm hoping to find a recipe that I can make and not rely on a mix. Most of the better gluten-free pizza dough recipes call for egg and milk, and those are both no-nos.

Verdict: Pizza night *may* be reinstated in our house. We'll try again next month.

The tacos were a recipe I've used for awhile, adding in black beans and pinto beans to the ground beef. It never occured to me before to give Bryce the taco meat in a taco shell--I'd always just given it to him on his plate. Well, he picked up that taco and ate about half of it! No complaints, little encouragement needed.

Verdict: Tacos will be a regular feature here.

Bryce has been eating oatmeal or brown rice from Happy Baby for nearly 2 years. Here's the kicker---it was the last food we were still spoon-feeding him. For whatever reason, Bryce felt that "ummm" (his name for oatmeal or rice) was to be fed TO him by Mom or Dad while sitting in his high chair. We have tried for over a YEAR to get him to self-feed his breakfast, but he wouldn't. Because of feeding therapy, we knew not to push and eventually, he'd eat it on his own. And he does!

Verdict:  High chair is finally gone. Bryce eats oatmeal by himself!