Little Rainy Jr. requires a dose of prune baby food every other day or so to keep things moving in a normal fashion. And over the last three weeks or so, there seems to be an absence of said prunes from the grocery shelf. I’ve gone to every store in town, no dice. Checked the stores around where I work too and they are also sans prunes. Is something up?
-rainy
You mean just the pureed prune baby food, in the little jars? Nothing on GoogleNews about a failure of the California dried plum harvest, but I’d suspect a momentary glitch at the factory or in the trucking and shipping pipeline.
Meanwhile, just get regular prunes and puree them. That’s all you’re buying in the jar anyway–you’re paying for the convenience of having Gerber moosh them up for you.
Simmer a cup of pitted prunes in a cup of water for 10 minutes, drain, and push through a sieve or food mill. You can make a huge batch and put dollops into ice cube trays and freeze it, and stop underwriting the baby food conglomerates. Although of course then you don’t get the cute little glass jars for putting nails and screws into…
Whoops, sorry, don’t drain them totally, save out 1/4 cup of the cooking liquid, or else they’ll be too gooey.
California prune growers decided recently that the word “prune” was a turn-off to many consumers, so they now call their product “dried plums.” For example, Sunsweet, one of the big marketers of prunes, now uses the words “dried plums” on their packaging (see the Sunsweet web site ). Lately there have been ads for Plum Smart juice, which is touted as being good for digestion. It’s really prune juice. It’s possible that they’ve even extended the name change to baby food. Try looking for dried plum baby food.
But…I’d think that even if they had started calling it “dried plum baby food”, it would still be there on the shelf where the “prune baby food” had been. Manufacturer’s reps fight the grocery store hard for placement on the shelves, and even if they ended up putting it somewhere slightly different in the Baby Food section, still it would be around there somewhere, they wouldn’t be putting the “dried plum baby food” over, say, in the Diabetic section, or by the meat counter. It would be in the Baby Food.
Gerber still lists “prunes”.
http://www.gerber.com/prodcat?catid=508
Beechnut still lists both “plums” and “prunes”.
http://www.beechnut.com/Our%20Baby%20Food/results.asp?page=4&Category=2&SearchValue=2&SearchType=By%20Product%20Type&SearchVals=Fruits&ListValue=2
[shrug]
Well in a email from Gerber they are “in short supply of this product.” And are ramping up their production.
BTW Duck Duck Goose, thanks for the recipe as it looks like I’ll be doing that for a while until supply catches up. But hey, ‘baby food conglomerates’ gotta eat too. And believe me, between Rainy Jr., working and housekeeping I’ll gladly do some underwriting for the convenience of the little jars.
-rainy
Oooh, I’m glad you bumped this, 'cause I was seriously considering it myself.
Because I just had to know if everything…came out all right.
wheeeeeeeeee!!
::: runs away :::