Sugar Cane and Lemons

I'm finally getting around to posting about Matt's adventure with Sugar Cane. But not before I pop this piccie out here. Matt asked me to post it because now, after the fact, he thinks it's hilarious. So do I, in retrospect.

I was in the kitchen this morning preparing Gaby's breakfast and all of a sudden from Matt's room I hear; "Oh no, I can't move, I can't move!" and I rush in there thinking he's had a stroke or something equally horrible. Turns out this was the problem:



Matt had tossed and turned in his sleep last night and somehow managed to get himself entirely wrapped up in the comforter. Silly kid! But still, I'm glad it was nothing more serious than that!

Now onto the sugar cane.

Monday night when we went to the store we noticed that they had a huge Hawaiian display set up in the produce department and Matt decided to pick up a couple of fresh pineapples. Behind the pineapple he noticed long stalks and he asked me what they were. I told him that I thought they were sugar cane and sure enough, they were. They weren't very expensive and I asked Matt if he wanted to get one and told him that when we got home we'd look up on the net how we get table/cooking/baking sugar from those long, long stalks.

Whilst he was excited about trying the real thing before it's processed, he wasn't too keen to be seen walking through the supermarket with a nearly 8' stalk of sugar cane. So we waited until we had everything we needed and then got the sugar cane and paid for everything. We were walking to the car and Matt turns around, holding his long cane and looks at me and says;

"I bet people think Jesus came back early"

It just struck me as hilarious. His face was pretty red but he thought he looked pretty funny walking around with that thing. Then we had to wrangle getting it in the car. Alas, we made it home.

Here are some pictures of Matt and the cane, breaking the cane and the inside of it.











The above pic is what the inside of raw sugar cane looks like. I tasted it and it's grotesquely sweet and very fiberous. I also had no idea that sugar cane was "juicy". It really made a mess when Matt was breaking it apart so that we could store it in the fridge. At least a cup, if not more, liquid came out of it. Talk about sticky. Gaby wasn't too thrilled with the taste either. I let her lick the sticky part. What she does like however, will surprise, if not amaze you.

Each week we try a new taste or texture, keeping in line with her pediatrician's guidelines and the age appropriateness of the food. Originally I hadn't intended for this item to come up this week, but Gaby seemed rather interested in the piece of lemon I had floating around in my water, so I decided to let her try it.

Turns out she LOVES it! I'm serious folks, this kiddo loves lemons. (And yes, I did de-seed the entire lemon before I cut it up to be used in water and with fish later in the week.) Wasn't a puckered up sour face to be had, not until I tried to take it away...











Juicy, wet, lemon-face!



She started to bite into the rind and I got scared that she was going to bite off a piece and choke, and there wasn't really much of the inside left to speak of, so I decided to take it away. Talk about ticked off! She was not happy with her mama at all! In the picture below she had dropped it and then I took it away.



Our next taste experiment will be frozen blueberries in her baby-safe-mesh-feeder, next week. Daddy will be here for that one and it should be exciting.