I have a few trolls in The Wandering Gourmand community. They recently surfaced on two occasions – the announcement of my wife’s pregnancy and then again on our son’s birth.
Life Before Baby Gourmand – Sipping Wine in Cape Town
Both posts were immediately followed with comments of “your traveling days are over,” “you’ll never eat out again,” and “get used to chicken nuggets instead of chicken cacciatore.” Normally they follow the spite with a muahaha to show that the commenter takes delight in trying to discourage us.
Why yes, we knew life would change as we grew from a family of two to three. It’s the very reason why we waited eight years to have children. We were afraid of how they would change our lifestyle, which heavily focuses around travel, food, and craft beer.
A Family of Three
After following family travel blogs like Y Travel Blog and Almost Fearless, we started to consider what our life would look like with baby in tow. Their stories encouraged us as they live out travel lives much wilder than we’d ever consider. After many long conversations and a lot of contemplation, we decided to pursue parenthood.
Please note trolls, we did not go into this naively!
We knew life would change. Exactly how? We weren’t sure. Each baby is different and the bundle that was cooking inside my wife was a mystery. We remained optimistic that we’d somehow instill our passion for food and travel into his life.
I almost don’t want to write this next paragraph, but Baby Gourmand has arrived and so far we’ve been blessed.
He’s a really good baby! Almost immediately, he started sleeping through the night (only waking up for feedings) and is super chill out in public.
Baby Gourmand’s First Halloween
We’ve already taken him out to dinner on several occasions!
And no, I’m not talking about fast casual restaurants or family establishments. We’ve taken him to real restaurants. Our first outing was lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant, La Poblanita. It was our first baby step into resuming normalcy, and he did great, sleeping through the entire lunch.
A few days later, we decided to be a little more risky and took him to a five-star restaurant in Uptown, The Mandrake. You know, the kind of place where everyone is cooler than us, and most customers would snub their noses at children in a restaurant.
First Restaurant Outing
Once again, he did awesome!
He was awake the entire time and didn’t make a peep. He was entranced by the funky lighting and hypnotic background music. The staff took turns coming over to him to tickle his feet and wave hello. He was definitely getting more attention than we were.
We had the same experience at Saffron, an upscale Indian restaurant in our neighborhood. While we were a little put off that they sat us in what amounted to the storage room when they saw the baby carrier in my hand, the staff couldn’t stay away, marveling at his smile and wide-open eyes as he sat quietly through dinner.
Dinner at The Mandrake with Baby Gourmand
The travel will not stop!
Now that we know his temperament, we’re already trying to plan travel for 2016. We have a couple of ideas in mind hoping to choose one international and one domestic location.
Trolls, before you scroll to the bottom and leave a nasty comment, I’ll save you the carpal tunnel. We are aware that travel will look different, and we’re okay with that. In fact, looking forward to seeing how our travel will change.
Baby Gourmand Dreaming of Travel
The one area where we’re struggling though is with cooking.
Some of the most fun my wife and I have is cooking together. We enjoy preparing elaborate meals and then slowly savoring them alongside a rare craft beer. Lately, I don’t even have the energy to throw a slab of steak on the grill for fear of falling asleep and burning the house down.
Thankfully, we are surrounded by a supportive church community. The meal train is keeping us well fed with more than enough leftovers to fill up most lunches and dinners.
Wewalka Bistro and Family Style Pizza Dough
Yet, we yearn to play in the kitchen but lack the energy or time. We refuse to use convenience products to make cooking easier as they are filled with so many harmful chemicals. After a month, it almost seemed like the kitchen was a museum from our past.
Then I learned about Wewalka European style dough. The already prepared pastry dough follows strict European Union standards meaning no artificial colors, bleaches, bromated flour, hydrogenated oil, or high-fructose corn syrup. Suddenly, baking an “almost homemade” pizza sounded feasible. In fact, we planned to bake two pizzas, one with the family style dough and the other with the bistro dough, to entertain friends who were coming to see the baby.
Pizza Making with Wewalka!
For the first time in a long time, we were feeding others instead of being fed, and it felt good.
To add to the convenience, we topped the pizza with ingredients that were already in our freezer (homemade pesto and pizza sauce) or we could easily prepare (fried peppers and grilled chicken).
Briar Hill Style Pizza with Wewalka Family Style Dough Ready for the Oven
I have to admit that I was skeptical as I pride myself on making homemade pizza dough, yet was very impressed with the quality. It was a delicious and easy solution to our cooking woes.
We are by no means back on the cooking bandwagon and have admittedly opted for carryout one too many times in the past week as one of our meal train dinners was missed. It’s nice to know that Wewalka exists when we have to itch to cook but don’t want to go through the hassle of making homemade. I’m already look for ways to incorporate Wewalka’s other doughs (puff pastry and crescent rolls) into our cooking repertoire as we reacquaint ourselves with the kitchen.
You can find Wewalka in the refrigerated section of your favorite grocery store.
Wewalka Bistro Style Pizza Dough with Pesto and Grilled Chicken
Life after baby isn’t so bad!
As I admitted above, we’ve been blessed with a great baby. I know not all babies are as easy going as Baby Gourmand. Still, life involves some adjustments. For us, it’s been summoning the time and energy to cook. I;m glad to know that products like Wewalka exist that are both GMO free and convenient.
I continue to remain optimistic that having a child will not end our passions. Instead, we’ll look to incorporate him into those passions whenever we can.
What was your biggest adjustment after having a baby?
Blog post courtesy of Wewalka.
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