As a new mum last year, i always have trouble mixing and matching the ingredients for the porridge that i cooked for my elder daughter. Firstly, i will worry bout the taste and secondly i worry if the ingredients clashes with one another…so i would usually do some survey online if i want to mix any peculiar combination in my porridge. Anyway, now that i have my second child, i am more confident in mixing and matching and i actually enjoyed it, especially when my kids gobbled down all the porridge. So i would like to share my experience and will be posting pics of the combination that i use.
Although not all kids will have the same taste buds but at least this will be a good starting point for the new mums…
As a rule of thumb, i usually mix a green vegetable (e.g.: broccoli, red spinach, sweet peas, french beans etc) with a non-green vegetables (e.g.: carrot, baby corn, pumpkin, water chestnut, sweet potatoes, purple potatoes etc) and lastly i will add a meat (fish, chicken, or pork). Sometimes i may add anchovies and dried scallop as well to make the porridge more tasty. I guess the rationale behind this is that different colour vegetable have different vitamins and mineral, so i usually rotate the colour throughout the week. Eg: carrot on mon, sweet corn on tues, purple potatoes on wednesday etc. so that my kids can enjoy the goodness and different vitamins. Another consideration is that at least one of the ingredients must be sweet or at least with a nice flavour, e.g.: sweet potatoes, purple potatoes, salmon , pumpkin, sweet corn… if all the ingredient is bland, then the porridge wont be so nice and palatable.
As my son is now 7 months old, i usually will check out some websites before serving him a new food. there are 2 websites that i usually refer to, and there are some contradictory information , so it really depends if your child has any history of allergy and also if there are any pre-existing condition, if the kids are otherwise healthy, then i think main thing to take note is no honey until 1 years old (risk of botulism), and no acidity food (e.g.: lemon ) until 8 months old or at least not on empty stomach:
1.http://wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com/
this website is the most conservative one i felt. so if there is history of allergy in the family, this will be a good one to use. why do i say it is very conservative, e.g.: many other sites actually recommend brocolli as one of the first vegetable to serve, but according to this website, it is recommanded to serve only after 8-10 months due to the gas and also digestion problem.
2. http://www.babycenter.com/0_age-by-age-guide-to-feeding-your-baby_1400680.bc
ok, time to share a recipe for today. today i cooked a combination of red spinach ( a green leafy vegetable as it is rich in iron, it is really important after 6 months for kids to be feed high iron food as their iron stores ran out and breast milk doesnt really provide iron), together with sweet honey potatoes and chicken.
As you can see, it is a nice blend of green and orange colour, looks and taste good 🙂 yummy yummy!
i would recommend this for kids 7 months and above, although my paediatrician actually says there is no issue with giving green leafy vegetables even at 6 months but she did mention that it is easier to digest the coloured vegetable e.g.: carrot , pumpkin etc, also i usually start my kids off with vegetable alone at 6 months and slowly add meat when they started to eat more porridge which occurs at about 7 months…
