My husband and are are both native New Yorkers with sophisticated palettes. We have been exposed to cuisines of all nationalities and are generally pretty open minded about food, with one caveot. It must be good quality ingredients.

You see, my husband is a former chef who worked with the likes David Boulez, Patrick Clark and Judy Rogers. We are food snobs.

When my daughter was born, she was 100% breast-fed. Our budget was very tight and I couldn’t spend $0.45-$1.00 on baby-food, especially since my experience tasting baby food, even the organic stuff, was bleck and more bleck! It is truly awful. Why would you give this to your child?

So instead, we would roast vegetables, or prepare fruits, puree them in the blender, and then put them into ice-cube trays to make the perfect portion side of baby food. Not only did it taste better, but we could honestly say, we knew exactly what was in it. And, as an added benefit, it was far more economical. The price of jarred baby food is astronomical in comparison. As someone who hates to cook, I can say it wasn’t that hard, or time consuming. I would pick 2-3 items per week, and prepare them to be frozen. After awhile, I had a nice stock of food items to chose from.

My daughter loved this baby food, and when we were traveling, she refused to eat the jarred stuff. She ate all her green vegetables and other nutritious items. She was a very good eater and not at all picky. In fact, I think broccoli was her favorite.

Two years later, one can imagine our dismay that our daughter refuses to eat most things we give to her. We eat well, and we do eat quite gourmet. But most of our food is quite simple. Basic rice, chicken, pastas. We’re not eating anything particularly complex.

One thing she likes to eat, and can eat it every day if we allowed it, is Chef Boyardee. We cringe everytime we prepare it, not only because it comes from a can, but there is so much JUNK in it. But Chef Boyardee must be doing something right. They have mastered the taste and consistency kids love.

With that in mind, I’m going to try to get my husband to reproduce this tomato sauce. It is supposed to taste like Chef Boyardee. If we succeed, we will begin to take back control of our daughters diet. I hope it works out.