Todays new trick

We've mastered sitting up!

I want an app

Maybe this app exists, maybe someone who wants to make some money will read this and create it, I don't know, but I want an app.

Specifically, an app where I can list everything that's in my kitchen and the app will come up with recipes to help me use up as many of those ingredients as possible.  My pantry is full of stuff.  Lentils, miso, coconut milk, just the most random stuff that I bought at some point thinking we would try something with it.  But I can't seem to figure out the skill of looking at a bunch of individual foods and figuring out how to make a meal out of them.

I want to go through my entire kitchen and make a list of everything I have.  Then I want to hit a button that says "plan my menu" and have it create a day or a weeks worth of recipes that uses up as many of those ingredients as is reasonable and a shopping list for the items I don't yet have to finish those recipes.

Each recipe should have 2 ingredient lists:  "You have" and "You still need"
Each recipe should also list out what cooking stuff you will need such as small sauce pan, 2 large bowls, etc.

Options should include:

• Use up fresh produce / soon to expire food first
• Cook for 1 person / 2 people / 3 people and so on
• Time you want to eat (and it tells you what time you need to get started to eat at that time)
• Enter diet restrictions (kosher, vegetarian, allergic to blah blah blah, etc)
• Goal calorie count per day (for the dieters among us)

There should be a "how to" guide for instructions like "saute" or "braise".

Every day, you check off the recipes you made and it keeps track of what is left in your kitchen.  You can also manually enter when things are used up, like if you accidentally dump flour all over the floor, to keep your inventory up to date.

I can follow instructions.  If there's a list of what to do and when to do it and I can look up how to do it, I can cook (says the girl who has set a kitchen on fire with tater tots).  But I simply can not figure out how to make a meal from the food in my kitchen.  I'm faced with this failure at least 3 times a day!

Someone make this app, or point me to an app that exists that at least inventories then shows me how to use up the inventory of my kitchen.  I will pay money.  Seriously.  I'm sick of feeling hungry and stupid all day while food rots and expires.

Separation Anxiety has begun

The girls are now getting upset when they can't see me.  It's both flattering, and exhausting.

I actually attempted to cook a decent dinner last night (K normally does the cooking) and I spent the whole time running back and forth from the kitchen to the playroom because every time I went out of sight, I could hear the stressed out little noises.

Middie Biddie is having a stronger reaction than Teeny Tiny so far.  She required extra couch time with mommy yesterday.  I think we moved the girls into my office just in time.  She'll be playing, then she randomly gets upset and generally if I just turn and give her a funny face she starts giggling and all is well again.  She just wants to make sure I'm paying attention.  We had some problems going to bed last night though.  K came home about 10 minutes after I put them down and we thought they were fading out so he didn't want to disturb them.  But about 15 minutes later, MB started getting stressed out so he went in to rock with her for a little bit.  She was fine when he put her back in the crib, but as soon as he stepped out of sight, she started pitching a fit again.  Fortunately it was a short one and she fell asleep relatively quickly.

Teeny Tiny is still doing ok playing on her own for the most part.  I have to be out of sight for a little while for her to get upset.  She treats having my attention as a bonus that makes her especially happy rather than a necessity to maintain a decent status quo.  But she's holding on a little tighter when I hold her (is this baby hugs?) and kind of reaches up for me to pick her up when I walk near.

New food experiences, mixed results

I gave the girls peaches in a mesh feeder today.  One eating method was far more successful than the other.

 But they eventually got on the same page.

Next, we tried a breakfast with a little bit of texture.  I had a pouch of black bean, quinoa, banana mixture and we gave it a go.  Teeny Tiny kind of gave me a face but seemed to think it was ok.  Middie Biddie gave me gag face.  I've seen gag face before and it's usually just because it's something new and they end up liking it by bite number three.

Well, gag face continued and a few bites later, gag face turned into full on puke.  Yup, entire stomach contents flowing out of my baby and filling up her tray with milky, peachy, black bean goo.  Miraculously, she managed to keep 95% of it off of her and only nailed the bib and tray which makes for a relatively easy clean up.  Also miraculously, she didn't seem all that upset by the vomiting.

I mixed up some plain oatmeal and pears because I knew she likes that and it would be easy on her tummy.  Risky maneuver  feeding a child directly after puking, but I didn't want her to be hungry (seriously, I don't think a drop of her bottle or anything was left in her tummy) and she was still enthusiastic about eating once she realized I wasn't trying to give her the black bean stuff anymore.  Teeny Tiny had no issue with the black bean stuff so I continued to give that to her while Middie Biddie got the pears.  I tried one more bite of black bean on MB to see if it was a fluke, like maybe a textured piece hit the back of her throat wrong making her gag, but she really didn't like the taste.