Laurie asked for cheese in a can for Christmas. She got cheese in a can.

The cheese in a can is Cougar Gold, made since 1948 at Washington State University in the southeast corner of Washington, an area known as “Idaho.”

I had my doubts about Cougar Gold. Laurie assured me that she had heard it was really good, but I figured (a) the people who said it was good had low enough standards to buy cheese in a can, and (b) it’s made at our alma mater’s rival university. (Laurie and I both went to University of Washington, WSU’s mortal enemy on the pig-iron, or whatever a football field is called.)

Well, *mea gulpa*, or however you say “I’m a cheese-eating snob” in Latin. As Laurie was opening the can, which is shaped like a huge can of tuna, I realized that there’s no real difference between cheese in a can and cheese in the thick shrinkwrap that Tillamook uses on its two-pound baby loaves, which we buy all the time.

So, of course, Cougar Gold really is good, a very crumbly white cheddar, suitable for your most rustic bread or Prince Charles Biscuits. Janet Fletcher, the San Francisco Chronicle’s cheese whiz, wrote a column about it last year. I was going to say it would be cool if you could put the cheese back in the can and reseal it, which you can’t, but when has two pounds of cheese ever lasted more than a few days around here?

The only remaining funny thing about Cougar Gold is that you have to keep the can refrigerated. Are there any other canned foods that have to be refrigerated?

The first rule of baby food is: don’t buy baby food. The corollary to the first rule of baby food is: don’t make baby food, “super” or otherwise.

A baby who is sitting up and starting to be weaned is ready to eat almost anything you eat. Baby books are full of advice to the contrary, cautioning you to introduce one new food per week, or avoid adding salt. They’ll tell you to start with rice cereal, or fruit, or sometimes meat. They’ll advise you to start with bland foods, even though babies will naturally gravitate toward garishly-colored beeping toys and other non-bland entertainment.

Little of this advice has any scientific basis. If you don’t have a history of food allergies in your family, the only foods you really need to avoid are choking hazards. Once Iris became interested in food, she wanted to eat our food, not a jar of sludge. The exception was Gerber fruit purees, which are excellent mixed with whole-milk yogurt.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends breast milk exclusively until the baby six months. So does Iris, who subsisted entirely on breast milk until she was seven months old, and wasn’t particularly interested in solids for about another month after that. I think even people who are strong proponents of breastfeeding often look at a chubby four-month-old and think, “Wow, that kid looks solid. He probably needs some extra calories, not just this milk.” Unless your doctor says otherwise, he certainly doesn’t.

My advice, which is sure to be misinterpreted, is that if you’re having a baby, make sure you have a sharp chef’s knife, because you will be doing a lot of chopping. This is still much easier and cheaper than keeping jarred food on hand. Two of Iris’s first favorite foods, when she was eight or nine months old, were chopped chicken with mushrooms and creamed spinach. The first time she tried chicken enchiladas she went crazy and devoured two whole enchiladas, and they were *spicy*. This was long before she could crawl.

Kids are different, and your mileage may vary. But most babies are extremely unpicky eaters before they turn one, and it’s amazing what they can chew with few or no teeth. If you’re having something crunchy for dinner, mince it. If you’re having something tender, cut small bites.

There’s a good reason to feed your baby this way that goes beyond convenience, nutrition, or saving money. Eating is one of the first activities you can share with your baby and enjoy in the same way. Tickling and making faces and pretending to eat baby’s toes are irreplaceable, of course, but when you’re sitting and sharing enchiladas, suddenly it’s clear that you have a little person on your hands.

Soon enough, the little person will start spitting peas at you, but that’s another story.

At the risk of sounding like an informercial (preferably the one I used to watch in high school with the bowtied Australian guy selling car wax), how much would you pay for peace of mind? Would you pay $7.50 plus shipping?

If so, get one of these: the KnockKnock _What To Eat_ pad. It’s from the makers of those slang flash cards (I am informed that they are the shizznit, or the crunk, or something).

I’ve never met anyone who didn’t find meal planning a chore. Last year I interviewed Donna Hay, one of Australia’s most successful cookbook authors. Hay puts out a new book pretty much every year, and it’s always beautiful and full of simple and full-flavored recipes, and always sells a jillion copies. But she’s refreshingly down-to-earth in person and joked about blowing up Starbucks. Nothing she said endeared her to me more than this:

> But it’s amazing, whenever anyone comes lately for dinner I go, “Well, what do you feel like?” Because I hate choosing what to cook. You want to come to dinner, you have to tell me what you want. You know, sometimes it gets to be a bit of a trial.

She wasn’t saying this to cop a hip everywoman vibe, honest. This is a woman who could cook from her own books for the rest of her life–or could afford to eat out every night–and she has the same problem as you and me. Why is this so hard?

To help fill in the pad, we maintain a Backpack page that we try to keep up to date with our favorite dinners. Have a look, and see that I’m not kidding when I say we eat a lot of stew. Another page is for recipes we’d like to try; that one is in dire need of replenishing, although I see it’s time to give Vietnamese beef stew another try. If it’s no good, I can buy some at Baguette Box, which makes an extremely tasty stew with lots of star anise and annatto oil.

I was going to spin one of my cockamamie theories about why it’s so hard to plan dinners, maybe relating it to the interminable discussions about where to go out to eat with friends, but I really have no idea. I assume it’s one of those paradox of choice situations where too much choice is paralyzing. In any case, the greatest hits list and the What to Eat pad have helped a lot, so if you suffer from this common ailment, give those a try.

One more idea. Over the past year or so, I’ve become completely addicted to the web-based approach to dealing with my personal data–aside from Backpack, we use a web calendar, to-do list, photo sharing, and so on. A snappy web-based meal-planning application would be great. Anyone want to step up?

As a restaurant critic, I fancy myself the kind of person with a finely honed palate immune to trickery like squeeze-bottle sauce acrobatics, prepared to hand down an unbiased opinion on anything from barbecue to haute cuisine.

I’m wrong, of course. I’m like the guy who claims to be too smart to be influenced by TV commercials. An experience this morning brought home just what a dupe I am.

On the way to an appointment I stopped in at one of my usual downtown Seattle wi-fi spots, Dilettante in Westlake Center. (The others are Zeitgeist, Central Library, and Top Pot; anyone know any others?) It’s not the most scenic, but it’s extremely convenient, and sometime unscenic surroundings are just what you need to awaken the inward eye.

I bypassed their rich chocolate-laden specialty drinks (I’d been snacking on a dark Aero bar on the way there) and ordered a black tea. The tea is inexpensive, and the leaves are good quality–they serve Harney & Sons, the ones in the gossamer silk bags. But I didn’t enjoy the tea very much, because it was served in a glass.

The devil on my shoulder, the one who can justify anything, piped up. “There are plenty of scientific, objective reasons why tea might taste worse in glass. Maybe it has to do with the insulating properties of the materials or, uh, I got nothing here.” When your little devil craps out, that is sad. The fact is, I like drinking tea from a ceramic cup (a coffee mug is close enough) because tea and ceramic have always been together, like Siegfried and Roy. Also, I like the feeling of the grooves worn into the cup rim by previous drinkers, and if you think I’m going to turn that into a Siegfried and Roy joke, well, bite me.

If they ever do a movie like _Sideways_ about tea drinkers, they can hire me to sit at a coffeeshop drinking my darjeeling from a pint glass, and the audience will give the same heartbroken giggle they did when Miles drank his Cheval Blanc from a fast-food cup.