Dinner for a Baby

Good news, loyal readers! Another fairly boring post! I know, I'm a giver. You needn't thank me. I do it out of love. Here's a tasty, easy, healthy, quickish baby meal that's good freshly made, or straight out of the fridge.

Spinach and Cheese Pasta or Food Brick (hat tip to the inventor of Lunchblock)

1 pound uncooked smallish pasta shapes

1 pound frozen spinach--the good kind*

24 ounces marinara sauce

1 to 2 cups shredded cheese

Thaw the spinach and chop it up nice and small. If the pieces are too big, they'll be pick-out-able by a dextrous baby. If a dextrous baby does not eat your cooking, chop it any old way, but do chop it so it doesn't straggle off the fork in a pathetic way. Cook the pasta, drain it, and mix it with the sauce and spinach over medium heat. The pasta will absorb some of the liquid from the sauce, which is good. Once it's evenly mixed and very hot, turn the heat off and add the cheese. Stir briefly, then let it sit so the heat of the dish melts the cheese. If you keep stirring and heating, the cheese will glob up and get generally goopy. If you let it melt without harassing it, it'll stay evenly distributed and won't get rubbery. Once it's melted, you can serve and eat immediately, or you can proceed with the Food Brick portion of the recipe, which is this:

Pack it firmly into a leftover container. Refrigerate overnight, or until thoroughly congealed. Unmold it from the container, and if you packed in it tightly enough and used a suitably adhesive quantity of cheese, it will be a solid block which you can then slice into little hunks which make excellent, neat finger food for a toddler. Without the Food Brick portion of the recipe, this dish is messy enough that it might cause your co-parent, if you have one, to turn to you mid-meal, covered in sauce and cheese, and say, "Is there some other way people feed their children?"

*If you're a frozen vegetable comparison shopper, you'll know what I mean. In my neck of the woods, it's Stop & Shop "Nature's Promise" Cut-Leaf Spinach.