At 10 months, things picked up again. After her first 2 teeth appeared, she started to eat better. She began to like porridge again and agreed to eat from the spoon. Her favourite was sweet potato porridge. The new foods I introduced her to this month were:

• Chicken
• Cheese
• Red date
• Short-grain rice
• Cherry tomatoes
• Kiwi (green and golden)
• Dragonfruit
• Yogurt (Baby Yoplait)

Note: Read on for some recipes and tips regarding the above foods.

Basic Chicken Puree

• Pan-fry chicken in a non-stick pan for 1-2min per side. Avoid browning the chicken otherwise it will be too hard to puree.

• After cooking chicken thoroughly, add a little water or stock for easier blending.

The first time I introduced chicken puree to her, I placed a tiny amount on the spoon instead of mixing it into the porridge just in case she hated it (and the porridge would have to be thrown away). She came back for a second helping so I gathered that she liked it and I mixed it into the porridge. From then on, I gave her a mix of pork and chicken porridge.

Red date pork porridge

• Soak 1-2 red dates for at least an hour

• Cook the red dates together with the rice grains and stock in the slow cooker

• 15min before serving the porridge, mix the minced pork with some warm water (so that it doesn’t clump up in the porridge which will cause choking) then pour the mixture into the slow cooker.

• Stir the porridge and leave to cook for 15 minutes.

• Add in cooked vegetables into the porridge before serving (optional)

Don’t serve red date porridge too often as the taste is quite strong and some say that this may spoil baby’s taste buds. In any case, Alicia didn’t find red date porridge all that appealing so after awhile I just stuck to cooking porridge using stock. Just for info, the goodness of red dates: they nourish the stomach and spleen and strengthen the heart and lungs. And to reduce the heatiness, you can remove the seed from the red date.

Cheese
I introduced cheese in small amounts to her in this month. I let her have some Emmi cheese (which my niece was having at that moment) and she took a few mouths of it before turning away. I also tried giving her cheese with potato cubes so that the potatoes were tastier. Again, she only took a few mouths and that was it. I gather that she needs more time to get used to the taste of cheese…

French beans… AGAIN!
In this month, I started adding finely chopped French beans into her porridge. Finally, I could give her French beans without pureeing it… =)

Cherry tomatoes
I added cherry tomatoes to her porridge and she didn’t really like it. I sautéed the tomatoes in a bit of olive oil and added minced meat into it – much like our adults’ spaghetti sauce. I placed this combination into the macaroni shells and on the first day that she had it, she simply loved it. Subsequent days when I tried the same thing with her, it became a battle of wills (I try not to let it come to that state but sometimes it just happens – well, I’m still learning every day!)

More new fruits: Kiwi and Dragonfruit
As long as the fruit is sweet, my picky little eater will eat it – this holds true at least for this month. My little fruit baby is starting to not like papaya though it used to be her favourite fruit! How their tastes change!

Baby Yoplait (Yogurt)
She simply detested this! After feeding her the first mouth and tasting it for ourselves, we agreed that it was only human to detest the yogurt. It was sour and gross and it was little wonder that The Fussy One refused it…

Feeding Alicia became a nightmare in the 9th month. Somehow, when she turned 9 months old, she decided that it was time to be a fussy eater. I have no idea what triggered that off but from then on, it’s been a nightmare to feed her. My little girl who used to love food given by mummy now suddenly transformed into the pickiest, fussiest eater on planet Earth. The porridge which she took only 15 minutes to finish in the past suddenly became the most detestable food to her. She rejected everything that I fed via spoon so porridge and cereal became impossible to feed. That meant that I had to figure out how to get food into that little mouth… so I tried these foods (carbo):

• Potato cubes and mashed potato
• Slices of sweet potato
• Mee sua
• Wholemeal bread (Sunshine)
• Macaroni shells (small)
• Whole wheat pancake
• Tofu

From the above list, she took well to bread, pancake and macaroni shells. Finally, I thought… something that she agrees to eat.

Of allergies and tofu…
Tofu was served with mango cubes and mango puree. It looked like tau huey with mango sauce and cubes, looked pretty tantalising and my fussy eater took a little of it. Unfortunately, Alicia was allergic to soy – something we found out two days later when she started developing hives. Poor little darling… but fortunately, I don’t think she felt any itch unlike adults for she behaved normally and wasn’t fussier than usual. We brought her to the doctor and she was given some medicine for the hives to clear. I was later advised by a nutritionist that the next time I can introduce soy products to her is when she’s 15 months, so those who have babies with soy allergy do take note…

The recipe for whole wheat pancake can be obtained from First Foods by Anna Jacob, Pauline Chan, Samantha Thiessen, Janie Chua and Wong Yuefen and for copyright reasons I will not publish it in my blog. It’s an interesting book and has recipes for the Asian palate as it is written by Asians.

For Alicia, I actually adapted their recipe to make my own pancakes. Instead of just flour in the batter, I added vegetable and even meat puree into the batter! And when I served the pancake, I would serve it with some fruits like applesauce or mango cubes. Voila! A complete meal for the fussy little one.

Macaroni Shells
For macaroni shells, I would cook the shells till they were very soft instead of al dente. Then I’d fill up the shell with some fruit puree (applesauce/ banana) or mango/ papaya cubes. Vegetable puree wasn’t used because I thought the taste of the vegetables might be too overwhelming and she may not like it.

Snacks
I introduced Bellamy’s organic toothie pegs to her at this time and also Gerber’s stars. She really loved the stars and quickly mastered the art of self-feeding. =)

Check out my little darling eating her rusk!

Other things she ate were steamed cod with wolfberries (which I had to feed by hand) – messy, but it’s worth the mess to get some nutrients to her! I tried various ways of serving the fish – steamed cod with wolfberries, steamed cod with sweet potato puree topped with wolfberries, pan-fried cod with a drizzle of orange juice… in the end she loved her cod with wolfberries best.

And so the days passed, with feeding finger foods as the only way of getting any food into her little tummy…