Baby Food: Thoughts (and a Recipe!) on Introducing Solids

At 6 months, baby is ready eat solid food. There are many ways to go about it. When we started feeding solids to our first, we followed the one-a-week rule, which is to feed only one new thing a week until the baby can eat a variety. The goal of this method is to make it easy to identify if a certain food causes allergies.

As we got into the groove of raising little ones, we picked up and dropped out some practices along the way. Some of the things we did and still want to do include teaching the baby to drink from a cup, feeding natural food or food we cooked ourselves, and avoiding typical allergy-triggering foods (cow’s milk, peanut butter, throat-itching fruits like strawberries, kiwis, mangoes, honey) at less than 1 year of age. What we used to do for our previous weaners and decided to stop doing this time around is to give manufactured baby food like baby cereals, jarred/sacheted baby foods, and rusks/cookies, and to feed the baby separate food at mealtimes. Now, in addition to the cooked food made just for baby, we prefer to give a simplified version of the table food that the family will eat.

Preparing baby food

Making baby food can be a little daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Just looking through the fresh produce in the grocery can give plenty of ideas! So far, I have made applesauce and mashed sweet potatoes (a version of nilupak na camote without milk and sugar) for our youngest. But he is not stuck eating just applesauce and camote, because he is also eating from our table. For example, if we have tinolang manok (chicken soup with garlic and ginger) and rice for dinner, he can eat a bit of rice in a little soup with some of the chayote/papaya (mashed) added to the mix. He can eat fresh fruits like banana and papaya as we eat them for dessert.

Below, I share the recipe for mashed sweet potatoes, which can be used to make other baby food, like mashed squash, carrots, potatoes, stewed pears or apples.

Finally, remember that the most basic rule in feeding the baby solid food is to follow the advice of the baby’s pediatrician—so the ultimate advice here is to ask the doctor if, say, you want to do something different like baby-led weaning or if you've found a product you’d like to try. Happy weaning!

Put a little bit of food on the spoon and let the baby feed himself every now and then. babies like that a lot because it gives them more practice for hand-eye coordination.

Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Makes 1 cup of mashed sweet potatoes, good for about a week in addition to other food

Equipment

Saucepan or Instant Pot

Mixing bowl

Fork

Airtight food container for storage

Ingredients

3 pcs Orange sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced into same-sized chunks

2 cups Water

Procedure

1. In a saucepan or Instant Pot, place sweet potatoes and add water. Turn on the heat and simmer for 20 minutes or until the sweet potatoes are cooked (soft enough to pierce with a fork). Let it cool.

2. Using a fork, mash the sweet potatoes in the mixing bowl. Include any leftover cooking liquid to soften the mash.

3. Store the mashed sweet potatoes in an airtight container. It can keep in the refrigerator for about a week.

"Making baby food can be a little daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Just looking through the fresh produce in the grocery can give plenty of ideas!"