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If you have never had two children under four, you may be unaware that yogurt is one of the four main groups. And at my house yogurt comes in two varieties: spoon yogurt and pouch yogurt. In case those classifications aren’t self-explanatory, the children eat spoon yogurt out of small containers or bowls, with a spoon, and squeeze pouch yogurt enthusiastically into their mouths from small nozzled plastic bags (Siggi’s is a big hit).
The convenience of pouch yogurt is one of the great mood stabilizers in my life currently—among other things it allows me to hand a child something that occupies them for up to six minutes, and I don’t have to worry they will intentionally or inadvertently fling it all over the walls. In addition to being nice for me, it is also the type of yogurt the children insist on, every day, occasionally accompanied by shouting and foot stomping. Sadly for me as an editor at a food publication, my kids are both picky and arbitrary eaters—so I’m very glad to feed them endless pouches if it means they will, in fact, eat. But those pouches tug at the part of me that hates throwing away plastic bags, and they are often much more expensive than the alternatives.
So recently I had an idea: I went rummaging through a drawer full of baby stuff we’d retired, like pacifiers and rattles, and I unearthed our old Baby Brezza reusable baby food bags. They zip closed on top and have a screw cap and nozzle on the side for easy squeezing.
Before we bought them, most of the pictures we’d seen included happy parents who appeared well-rested, carefully squeezing out perfectly portioned bites of orange, green, and purple purées, sometimes identified as items like “turmeric carrot” and “Japanese sweet potato, honey, and ginger.” My wife and I bought them before the birth of our son four years ago before we realized that we were just not going to be the idealized parents who were constantly roasting, boiling, mixing, and puréeing our own baby food.
The Baby Brezzas didn’t get much use as baby food pouches, but they have a new life now as yogurt pouches. To my surprise the kids don’t care much about the flavor of the yogurt they’re eating as long as it comes to them served in something squeezable. So now we can just buy giant tubs of the plain Greek yogurt that’s a common ingredient in a lot of the adult cooking that happens in the house and scoop it into the Baby Brezzas for an instant breakfast or snack. The pouches can also be popped right on the top rack of the dishwasher, so cleanup, importantly, is very easy. Now my fridge is less crowded and the kids will sit and eat happily while I make myself a cup of coffee, clean up, or just sit quietly by myself on the stairs for 90 seconds.
If you’ve gotten to the end here and you’re thinking: “But Noah, all you did was put yogurt into pouches designed to hold things similar to yogurt,” I would say to you, yes, that is all I did. But I would also say that when you’re dealing with toddlers you need to find simple victories—pouch yogurt victories. Sometimes they’re the only kind you have the energy to achieve.
