Making Baby Food for first stage & 6 months onwards!

Fellow Mommies,

This post is to share with you how I make my solid food for my baby boy. Most of mommies may know how to make this or perhaps better than what I did for my baby and yeah, I would love to hear from other mommies too :)

Baby EJ has started solid when he was approaching 5 months old and his first solid food was Cerelac Rice Cereal + Breast Milk (as recommended by his pedi to start a little early)

Rice Cereal + Breast Milk (4.5 - 5 months +)
 
How to make: 1) Put 40 ml of breast milk into a baby bowl
                         2) Put 4 tbsp. of rice cereal
                         3) Mash it with baby spoon

It depends on the consistency you want, you can add more milk to make it more watery or put lesser milk to make it thicker. But for my baby, 40 ml of milk is just a perfect consistency. The rule of thumb is to make sure the rice cereal looks pretty much the same as runny yogurt :)
 
Before I start, this is what I use to make little EJ's solid food. This Avent baby food maker can do both steaming & blending.. Highly recommended to mommies!

And also make sure you have lots of fresh ingredients at home :)

Remember whatever purees you make, make sure the consistency is like yogurt, you can add milk or water to make it less thick or add rice cereal for thicker consistency!

I don't normally keep my baby food in the fridge or freeze it for later use because I want him eating fresh food I prepare every day. So I eat or discard the rest (in the blender or if he can't finish his food)

Potato & Carrot Puree (5 months +)
 
How to make:
 
1) Wash, Peel & Cut (& re-wash) in small pieces organic baby carrots (about 2 finger sized baby carrots) & potato (1 small-medium sized potato)
2) Steam for 20 minutes or boil in boiling water for 15 minutes (I normally steam!)
3) Add 1-2 tbsp. of rice cereal into food blender for thicker consistency
4) Blend all together until it becomes puree
5) Add water if necessary (if you find it's too thick, but so far I don't need to add water because I steam my potato & carrot & the steamed water remains inside the blender, thus there's no need to add water)

My boy loves it!

 

Having Potato + Carrot Puree with yummy toes as dessert ^.~

 

Apple + Pear Puree and/or banana ( 5 months +)

How to make:

1) Choose apple & pear that taste sweet (my boy hates it when his food is sour!)
2) Peel and cut into pieces
3) Steam for 15-20 minutes
4) Add half banana if you want too! No need to steam banana
5) Blend for a few minutes and serve the baby!

He loves it although his face shows otherwise but he always finish his apple + pear puree :)

Baby EJ eating apple purée for the first time, lol!! (I know it's a bit cruel to post this but his face is just too hilarious)

Avocado Puree ( 5 months +)

How to make:

1) Pick the ripe avocado (dark & soft when you press with fingers)
2) Cut, Peel, Scoop the avocado & put everything into food blender
3) Add 60 ml of breast milk
4) Blend everything
5) Serve!! My baby loves it!! It's very healthy and contains lots of good fat  :)

Avocado is one of the easiest solid foods that takes only a few minutes to make :)

 

Sweet Potato + Carrot Puree (5 months +)

How to make:

1) Choose yellow flesh sweet potato (Vietnamese Sweet Potato, it tastes really sweet) & baby carrot
2) I normally will make 1 med sized sweet potato + 2 finger sized baby carrots
3) Boil sweet potato (I don't peel off the skin) in boiling water for half an hour (the reason I don't steam sweet potato is because sweet potato turns brown the moment I peel off the skin, thus it doesn't look good! although it's still safe to be eaten!)
4) Peel, Cut & Steam carrots for 20 minutes (steam it, so the vitamins stay!)
5) Peel the boiled sweet potato
6) Blend boiled & peeled sweet potato together with steamed carrots
7) Add warm water for yogurt consistency

My boy's favorite is of course sweet potato :)

 

 

Porridge (6 months + )

What to prepare & How to make:

1) Pick organic white rice. I recommend organic because it's free from chemical & it takes 3 years to grow the rice.. It's healthier & safer!

2) Invest on slow cooker (it makes porridge more nutritious & softer)

3) One Small Coffee Cup for measurement (1tbsp of rice = 1 cup of water, my boy's currently taking 1.5 tbsp. of rice, that is equal to 1.5 cup of water)

4) Clean the organic rice

5) Cut & clean one small piece of meat (I use pork)

6) Cut & clean one small piece of pumpkin (you can alter too, like one day is pumpkin, the other day is carrot or potato or sweet potato or broccoli or even spinach) you can mix two vegetables too :)

7) Soak into water one dried Japanese scallop for 15 minutes (to clean it) Dried scallop makes porridge taste good! Scallop has nutritional elements!

Let's make the  baby porridge:

1) Pour all ingredients (rice, vegetable, pork, dried scallop and 1.5 cup of water) into the ceramic bowl

2) Normally it will be perfectly cooked in 3.5 hours (you can adjust the water level of your slow cooker accordingly, normally the manual book will let you know how much water should you put outside the ceramic bowl to cook for either 3.5 or 5 hours)

3) That's it, just wait for 3.5 hours for it to be cooked!

4) This is how it looks like after being cooked for 3.5 hours... (I use different type of vegetable each day, it can be pumpkin, spinach, broccoli, carrot, sweet potato, etc)

5) This is how my porridge looks like & it's ready to feed the baby! Technically, he's eating white/plain porridge but it's not tasteless at all.. In fact, it's tasty & pretty sweet :)

In my tradition, young infants are not allowed to eat meat until they are 8 months and above, but we do put meat (preferably pork) when we cook baby's porridge because we believe that the fat & broth extracted from the meat is more nutritious than the meat alone. Same rule applied to putting dried scallop, carrot, pumpkin, etc to cook baby's porridge.. It's to extract the good & natural broth :)

In other tradition, mommies use blender to blend meat & vegetables together with the porridge to make baby's food, but I prefer to follow my mother's old tradition :)

Nevertheless, it doesn't have to be plain all the time, as you can see from the picture below on the right side. I mash cooked pumpkin to my baby's porridge and yes, it's sweeter & tastier! The pumpkin is super soft & very easy to mash because it has been cooked together with the meat & porridge for 3.5 hours.. You can also mash other things such as potato, carrot, spinach or broccoli :)

 

6) I feed my 6.5 month old baby boy porridge twice a day and normally I cook my porridge at 7am and it's ready by 11am for his lunch. I cook porridge once a day & the rest of porridge, I put inside food thermos to keep it warm & to feed him again at 4pm (early dinner)

 

Yummy porridge in the thermos :)

I hope my sharing can be useful for first time mommies & don't hesitate to ask me should you need more information on how I make my baby's first solid food!

For more Baby Foods I made for my son, check it out here

Until Next Sharing, mommies!
Netty