"baby" news and stories

My goddaughter turns 1 today and the topic of conversation around her parents' house in recent weeks has been the perfect cake for baby to celebrate her first birthday.

It got me to wondering how parents choose the right cake for that oh-so-special Kodak moment. If you have a kid named Madeline or Lady Baltimore, you can get away with serving an eponymous cake. The rest of us have to weigh taste with what will look best smeared on that beaming butter bean's face. Do you go small or big?

My friends chose to stick with tried and true recipes -- a white cake with raspberry filling, cupcakes and a cheesecake for the adults.

But I'm still curious, what would you choose?

Researchers from Exeter and Oxford U asked 740 pregnant women (all first-time moms) to keep a food diary during their gestation periods.

Their findings? That women who ate more food and more nutrients were 24% more likely to give birth to a boy (specifically, 56% of the women in the group who ate the most gave birth to boys). The average woman who gave birth to a male consumed 2,413 calories a day and ate foods containing potassium, calcium and vitamins C, E and B12. The odds of having a boy were also higher among women who consumed one bowl of cereal every day (though the researchers didn't specify whether the bowl was eaten at breakfast or not).

But some people are wary of the stats, saying that a man's sperm ultimately decides whether a child will be male or female, and that diet has little or nothing to do with it.

If anything, hopefully the study will remind and encourage pregnant women to eat a healthy, well-balanced meal no matter what sex their baby turns out to be.

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Epicurious and Dawn Direct Foam set out to find the world's messiest dish, and they found it all over the face of 1-year-old Audrey Kaplan. The food all over Audrey's face is spaghetti and meatballs, made by her grandmother, Dorothy.

Dorothy won a flatscreen TV and a year's worth of Dawn Direct Foam for submitting the picture of her very messy granddaughter. It's kind of ironic that this photo won, since Dorothy will presumably not be using Dawn Direct Foam (a dish soap) to clean up her granddaughter (although I'm sure it will do a number on her dishes).

What's the messiest dish you've ever come across?

Thanks to the huge role the media plays in our daily lives, pregnant women now have way more to worry about than even ten years ago. Getting pregnant means you are suddenly victim to tons of fear-inducing claims and studies, each new one seeming to contract the last. Exercise! Don't over-burden yourself! Eat chocolate! Go easy on the fat!

And now, claims that a little bit of caffeine probably won't hurt you are challenged by a recent study in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology that suggests that women who consume more than 200 mg of caffeine (one small cup of coffee) a day are at a greater risk for miscarrying.

In the study, documented in a NY Times article, 1,063 pregnant women were interviewed about their caffeine intake. Out of the total, 172 women had previously miscarried. The rate of miscarriages was higher in those who consumed 200 mg or more per day (24.5% out of 164) compared to those who drank no caffeine during their pregnancy (12.5% out of 264 women).

But of course, miscarriage occurs for reasons other than caffeine, some which can't be explained away through a study. But I'd love to hear from women who were once or are currently pregnant (or their significant others) to get their take on this news. Do reports like this make you nervous? Do you drink caffeine now? If so, would this study make you think twice? Or do you eschew science in place of good ol' common sense?

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My two year old nephew seemed bored with his usual baby gruel, so I thought I'd whip up a little something. The crab apples shown are peaking here (6800 ft.) and the trees are about 15 years old. The fruit is not too tart, and the meat is the consistency of a Bartlett pear. I picked this cluster and about 30 other apples, and made him some sauce as follows:

• Pick 50 crab apples, de-stem, remove fur from opposite end of stem with a swipe across a cheese grater, rinse.
• Blanche the apples, three minutes, or so. Using a potato masher, make a mash, but don't overdo it as you don't want the core and bitter seeds to get too crushed (you'll get a bit o' seed oil, no worries).
• Spoon about one cup at a time through a medium mesh strainer, making sure to get as much pulp through without too much peel, seed, or core. Repeat, trying isolate the unwanted bits by hand. This is a labor of love, mind you, and time well spent with the kids on a seasonal activity. The resulting mash yielded about four cups.
• It began to oxidize rapidly so I put 1/2 teaspoon lime juice in, and one tablespoon brown sugar.

The mash was distinctly homemade: a bit watery, but very tasty. I would put cinnamon in it for myself, but not the toddler. Also, I've been told not to sweeten baby foods with honey for fear of botulism...but this kid is two. Next year I will use honey. You'll wind up with a one-off, that is, if you freeze this sauce it will be a tasteless, separated mess when thawed.

Fall is here in the high country. "Eat your view".

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