Squeeze out some breakfast

Last night at about eleven I thought, "Hey, I'm still awake." This is an achievement, because I am old. I also thought, "Crap. I forgot to write anything for Day 18 of 30 Days of Blogging. I failed. I am a failure. I am incapable of meeting goals. No wonder I don't have a boyfriend. Or a pet. Or a plant," and then I took a deep breath and thought, "OK, Norma Desmond, let's reel in the dramatics just a little." To make up for skipping yesterday, I decided to write two entries today.

So, on Part 1 of Day 19 of 30 Days of Blogging, I'm going to talk about the horrifying breakfast I ate this morning, which was inspired by my Alternative Spring Break trip last year. On one of the days of that trip, we worked at the Capital Area Food Bank warehouse, spending a few hours sorting food donations. During part of that time, a few of us ended up sorting baby food to check all of the expiration dates, and that's where we encountered this:



Liquid beef.

Trey, Eric, and I stared at it in confusion and mild horror.

"That's beef and vegetables?"

"How is that even possible?"

"It feels like jelly. Like, there aren't any lumps at all."

"Do they just make beef stew and throw it in a blender?"

"What do you think it tastes like?"

That's the real question, isn't it? The one you wonder about most of all? Because really, if they can make beef and vegetables into something that you can squeeze out of a pouch to feed to a toothless child, then what does that do to the flavor?

This whole discussion occurred to me again last week in the grocery store. I was out west at the Kroger that has furniture and housewares, not my regular Kroger that just has groceries like a grocery store should, and I somehow ended up on the baby food aisle when I was looking for pasta instead. While trying to figure out how to get to food that I might actually eat, I noticed the pouch of beef and thought, "You know, I could just buy one and eat it."

So I bought it.

And this morning I ate it.

It turns out to be oddly tasteless, but it has a smell, something like cat food. It's not an appetizing smell, but maybe it smells differently to babies. The real issue with this, at least for me, wasn't the smell, the taste, or the slightly gritty texture. It was the visual.

Beef from a pouch looks like poop.



A lot like poop.



Like this will look exactly the same coming out of your baby as it does going in.

I'm sure babies like it, though.