Yesterday, I bought an organic green zucchini (summer squash) from Fairprice Finest to steam and puree as Chubbs next food. Before giving it to Chubbs, I tasted it and found it a tad bitter. But shrugged it off, thinking it was because I over-steamed it or I had left the skin on.
Chubbs obviously disliked it.
But he forged on bravely, and ate more when I mixed in a little butternut squash.
Twiddling his thumbs while waiting for his squash mix.
He didn't mind a little of it in his brown rice cereal either.
To applaud his job well done, we let him play with ice after his meal. He could hardly contain his excitement and joy!
Point of this post is, I researched on why the zucchini was bitter, and it turns out that eating bitter zucchini is actually considered food poisoning! People who ate bitter zuccs sometimes experience stomach cramps, vomitting, nausea and diarrhoea. Bitterness can be due to the fact that the zucc was harvested too early, or resulted when the zucc was grown in an environment where it's too hot, too dry, or where the soil was not nutritious enough. Another more severe reason is because, zuccs, like cucumbers contain Cucurbitacin E, which is poisonous. So if you taste bitterness in the zucc, do not eat it! And please do not feed it to your baby!
I seem to be making a lot of boo boos these days. Sigh. But I guess it's all part and parcel of being a rookie parent. All I can do is learn from my mistakes and be a cautionary tale to others :/ Thankfully, Chubbs is ok and did not suffer the symptoms of poisoning. But he did wake up many times last night, screaming, though. Mommy's very sorry buddy.
