Baby Food

Modern mechanics has brought any number of kitchen marvels - the electric mixer, the food processor and the blender. But sometimes progress doesn't offer the best answer. Consider the food mill. It may be mechanical and marvelous, but it is resolutely unmodern. It's not as basic as a mortar and pestle, but it's not far behind. There are only three parts: a big bowl with a hole in the bottom, a perforated disk that fits into that hole (most come with three disks with perforations of different sizes)

Linda and Brian Singer didn't let their two young children keep them from the romantic getaway they craved. No, they didn't leave the kids home or travel with a nanny.Their secret: "Booking a first-floor suite in Cancun," said Linda Singer, a Chicago graphics designer. "We'd put the kids to bed at 8 p.m., and we had from then on for ourselves. We'd eat dinner out on the terrace, listening to the ocean." Room service was essential, Singer added, laughing.Beth Pretty and her husband, Paul Sanz, squeezed in just as much R&R traveling with their 5-month-old daughter to the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Regarding your recent article on the health benefits of Hollywood-hip practices, there actually is a rationale for mothers who pre-masticate food for their infants ("Extreme mothering, celeb-style," May 24). There is a marked absence of a certain salivary enzyme in infants during the period from birth to 3 to 5 months. This enzyme is needed to digest complex carbohydrates found in grains such as rice, wheat, oatmeal, etc. It's the digestive enzymes in the mother's saliva that matters.

Two men who paid for $40 worth of groceries at a Giant store in Annapolis displayed a gun to a cashier who tried to charge them for a case of baby formula Tuesday.According to the police report, the pair came through a check-out lane of the store, which is in the 2300 block of Forest Drive. They put several items on the counter that totaled about $40. As they were leaving, the clerk noticed a case of baby formula that cost about $56 on the bottom rack of their grocery cart.When he told the men that he had to charge them, one of them replied, "You don't have to do that," and lifted his jacket up, revealinga gun.The clerk did not argue with the pair, and they left the store,police said.

Moms are feeding their babies solid foods before their bodies are developed enough to handle it, a new study by the Centers For Disease Control has found. The American Academy of Pediatrics has long advised that babies don't get solid food until they are four to six months-old. But 40 percent of the nearly 1,300 mothers surveyed in the study said they introduced food before that. Babies are better developed at 4 to 6 months of age, including having the ability to hold their heads up and open their mouths for food.

The Gypsy Queen food truck is having a baby. Annmarie Langton and Tom Looney have purchased the old Curbside Cafe truck and will be launching a slightly pared down version of the popular cafe on wheels.   "We're super excited," Gypsy Queen co-owner Looney said. The truck is set to launch within 10 days, he added. "We just got all of our permits. " The new truck is tentatively named The Little Gypsy, but the name has not been painted on yet. If you have a suggestion for a name, leave it here.

Turn some baby-food prunes into a delicious prune cake. Gloria Hube of Riviera Beach asked for a recipe, and chef Gilles Syglowski chose the one sent in by Sandy Nank of McHenry, Ill., who wrote that Prune Cake had been her family's favorite for years. But he preferred the icing for this cake that was sent in by Karen Stephen of Owensboro, Ky.Nank's Prune Cake2 cups flour1 1/2 cups sugar1 cup Wesson oil4 eggs1/2 cup buttermilk1 teaspoon baking soda1 teaspoon salt1 teaspoon cinnamon1 teaspoon allspice1 teaspoon nutmeg1 teaspoon vanilla1 jar junior baby-food prunes1 cup pecans, choppedPut flour, sugar, oil, eggs, buttermilk, soda, salt, cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg in a bowl and mix well.

WANT TO BE A CHILD PRODIGY? THERE'S STILL TIME!: You've heard all the recent buzz that kids need to learn certain stuff by, say, age 3 or they won't learn it at all, right? Or that babies should listen to Mozart to make them smarter? Well, now a guy named John Bruer says that's totally unproven. Bruer, who heads a group that funds brain and learning research, says research simply doesn't support these beliefs. For example, he says, the studies that found Mozart boosts brain power were conducted on college students, not children.

SHOP, shop, drop. Shop, shop, drop. Run all day from Owings Mills mall to Arundel Mills mall, from Wal-Mart to Kmart. It's what we do, it's who we are this time of year. But somewhere in all this holiday-shopping frenzy we've got to take time to feed ourselves and our families. We can sleep in January, but we need nourishment right now. How else will we have the strength to buy an armload of Barbies, score a pile of NFL 2K2 games for Playstation and sort out one DVD/CD player with MP3 decoder from another?

WASHINGTON - H. J. Heinz Co. was barred by a federal appeals court yesterday from buying the owner of rival baby-food maker Beech-Nut while antitrust authorities press their case to stop the merger. A federal appeals court issued an emergency injunction to halt the takeover while it considers a lower court's refusal to enjoin the merger of two of the three major U.S. makers of jarred baby food. The Federal Trade Commission argued that the combination of Heinz and Beech-Nut, which share about 30 percent of the U.S. baby-food market, would reduce competition.