Foodie Baby!

Being a foodie at heart I was super excited to start the Little Monkey on real food… I  know I was supposed to wait till she was atleast 6 months old but umm.. yea I didn’t. Besides, back in the day they fed us pretty early in the game.  She had great neck control and was able to sit up (thank you Bumbo!)  on her own and she was constantly  grabbing at our food and drooling away. Christmas dinner (when she was 2 months old) saw enough drool to fill an entire ice tray.

Time for baby’s first food! We started our journey when she was 4.5 months (with her paediatrician’s approval). I decided to make her starter cereal at home. Grinding brown rice at home sounded simple enough. And it was. For the most part. I made my own rice and oats cereal for the first month but found that it was hard for me to cook in small batches ( I liked making two meals AT MOST  each time). While you can grind and have the powder ready, you do need to boil the required powder for about 15 minutes to get it to cook. She needed four tablespoons of powder and 1/4 of a cup of breastmilk/water per feed…good luck finding a pot that small. Yes  I burnt many a pot.

Which is why I quickly moved to the fruits and veggies. They were easy to steam, purée and make in  small batches. She wasn’t a fan of my home-made rice cereal but loved  the blue steel oats and fruits. We quickly ate our way through avocados, prunes, carrots, sweet potatoes apples, pears, peas, and yup.. even mangoes.

Now that we’ve crossed two months of experimentation we have moved onto some fun dishes sprinkled with spices like cinnamon, coriander  (helps with constipation!) and curry powder. There’s lots of fun baby food recipes!

Here are of our biggest hits so far :

•  Carrot and spinach purée  with  coriander water ( Boil coriander powder in a cup of water, filter through a paper coffee filter, and store in the fridge. Use a tablespoon whenever you want to water down a  purée.)
• Pears purée with a dash of cinnamon (sweet cinnamon powder, not the sticks)
• Sweet potato and pea purée (hope to add garlic to this next week!)
• Lentils with a dash of curry powder
• Watermelon flavoured oatmeal (Puréed watermelon makes a juice. Use the juice to boil the ground oats in!)
• Prune flavoured everything! In our household sneaking in a spoon of puréed prunes into dishes that aren’t popular (home made rice cereal!) makes for a super popular dish.

Advice to early starters :

1) Listen to your baby : You can tell pretty quickly what’s a fave and what’s not. This works well when trying to figure out if certain items cause gassiness or discomfort. Cauliflower is a no go for us right now.

2) If it doesn’t look/taste/smell appealing to you…probably won’t for them either: Case and point, puréed bananas in our house are a huge failure. Pieces are a hit!

3) It’s okay to not feel like eating. Yes, even if you’ve spent twenty minutes prepping the food. Some days…aeh. Milk is all they want. Go with it.

4) Don’t be afraid to experiment: Foodie babies love to experiment.

5) Have fun. Let them touch and smell the food. More often than not, there’s a huge mess to clean up. But they look so cute with all than goop all over them! Okay..and we do eat in front of the TV or iPad on occasion, distraction helps at times.

6) Schedule meal times as close as possible to bath time

7) Know the difference between gagging  and choking. Quite a few gags here, especially when she’s allowed to feed herself .

8 ) Let them feed themselves super steamed veggies/fruis that can be picked up or purees than can be given on a spoon. You’d be surprised how fast they learn that the food goes in their mouth! I try my best to allow her to feed herself for the last five minutes.

9) Figure out your tiny tot’s favourite  fruit or veggie. Always have it in stock so that you can easily incorporate it into unpopular dishes.

10) Buy organic as much as possible. Remember the dirty dozen must ALWAYS be organic (Peaches, Apples, Sweet Bell Peppers, Celery,  Nectarines, Strawberries, Cherries, Pears, Grapes, Spinach, Lettuce & Potatoes)

Good luck!

   Bon Appétit Baby!