This post is related to a photo album on my FB: Musa’s Meals Diary

If you have read my post about welcoming solid foods for Musa and the review in the first week, you may want to know what he finally ate up to now. When I’m writing this review, he’ll become 9 months within two days, so almost three months of eating! (Read: what I mean with eating is consuming solid foods besides milk feeding.. :D)

I set up environment, routine, and style since the day 1 in giving Musa solids, but it was little disrupted in the second month when we went home country for three weeks. I didn’t wean him ideally during our stay in Indonesia because we traveled either inside or out of city/town almost every day. Time and tools to cook were limited as well, so before we settled at my parents home in the last week, I relied on jarred/tubed fruits/vegetables we brought from USA and also the fresh produces we got locally. Thanks to Allah, I found it was easy to serve him raw fruits/vegetables while being mobile. I wonder if his self-feeding habit has trained him to be such independent eater.

The review similar to this post will be made in series for six months of eating and I’m gonna make summary of the new foods for each month. I’m not 100% following recommendation about time to give particular food, but I find that Wholesome Baby Food website is nice to use for checking the reasons, so you can estimate the risk when you choose to differ. For example, broccoli is not recommended as the first food because it triggers gas (yet, I still gave Musa it in this first month and he was okay.. hahaha).

Besides the food summary, I also include a table containing meals of the month. Since I don’t make meal plan for Musa’s baby food (err.. I meant, I ‘write’ it in my head :D), the list helps me to trace what I’ve given to the baby from nutrition viewpoint.

Here is notes to keep in mind (must read! don’t get lost) while reading the review: The links I put on items in Food Summary refer to the products we consumed Food groups (Grains, Vegetables, etc.) are following USDA guide. For multiple food groups in a mealtime, the letters of food groups initials such as (g) for grain, (v) for vegetable, (f) for fruit, (p) for protein (meats, beans, fishes, etc.), and (d) for dairy products are indicated before or after the food name in Meal List table. To reduce confusion while reading, fat is not indicated because it’s almost always used in cooking. Empty cell in Meal List table does not always mean that Musa skipped the meal, but it could be the meal was missed to be logged The use of punctuation in Meal List table: Plus (+) means multiple foods are mixed into one food and may change their basic structure, e.g. : white rice + chicken broth = the rice is cooked with broth Comma (,) means multiple foods are eaten together or separately in a mealtime, most likely without changing their basic structure Musa is half self-feeding baby and we adopt BLW (Baby Led Weaning) rule in terms of giving baby foods in its original structure without making it into puree. In the Meal List table, if you see his meal is fruits or vegetable with no cooking method preceding / following or written with “…cuts”, it means he ate a la BLW baby.

Month 1 Review (6 month old >> Nov 8, 2015 – Dec 7, 2015)

FOOD SUMMARY

Grains (g)  >> considered as carbs (carbohydrates)

• All purpose flour, made from red-wheat
• Brown rice
• Multi-grain cereal, made from rice, oat, rye, and barley flour
• Pasta shells
• Pasta spaghetti
• Oatmeal cereal
• Oats, rolled
• Rice cereal
• White rice, medium-grain

Vegetables (v) >> considered as carbs (carbohydrates)

• Broccoli
• Carrot
• Cauliflower
• Celery
• Cucumber
  • Garden cucumber
  • Persian cucumber
• Green bell pepper
• Green beans
• Mushroom
  • “Shiitake” variety
• Peas
• Potato
  • Yellow potato
• Sweet corn
• Sweet potato
• Squash
  • Butternut squash
  • Japanese squash (kabocha)
• Tomato
  • Roma tomato

as spices/seasonings:

• Black pepper
• Garlic
• Indonesian bay leaf (daun salam)
• Indonesian keylime leaf (daun jeruk)
• Lemon grass
• Parsley
• Shallots
• Onion
  • Yellow onion

Fruits (f) >> considered as carbs (carbohydrates)

• Apple
  • “Honey crisp”  variety
  • “Fuji” variety
  • Apple pear
• Avocado
• Apricot
• Banana
• Blueberries
• Kiwi
• Mango
• Orange
• Peach
• Pear
• Plum
• Strawberries
• Raspberries

Protein (p)

• Beef
• Chicken
• Fish
  • Cod
• Lentils
• Tofu

Milk / Dairy Products (d) >> considered as carbs (carbohydrates), protein, or fat

• Breast milk
• Formula
• Cheese
  • “Edam” variety
• Butter, unsalted
• Yogurt, for baby, whole milk

** Non-food **

Oils >> considered as fat

• Canola oil
• Extra virgin olive oil

** Tasting only (not considered as “meal”) **

• Hummus

So far, I didn’t find any allergy with the foods he ate, but he experienced one-term (2-3 days) of diarrhea right at the 5th day. By tracking his foods in the previous days, nothing was susceptible as a cause. Based on little research and mommies experience, we were pretty sure that it’s an effect of Rotavirus vaccine he got on Nov 12, 2015 (the day before we found his stool watery).

MEAL LIST

Below is the list of his meals this month. Again, this is not meal plan because I didn’t arrange them prior to cook, but every night I recorded what he ate in one day. Sometimes I missed to log his foods, so if you see the table there are some empty cells. Please use this meal list if you need idea and feel free to ask me the recipes of foods you want to know. However, I post recipes occasionally along with photos on my FB album (see above). If you make the meal plan, my suggestion is to improve the list with amount of each foods.

Notes about meal list of this month:

• Rice was cooked in two optional ways: (1) steamed in rice cooker, taken from our rice, and thinned with broth in blender; (2) steamed in slow cooker or saucepan from the scratch with rice: water = 1: 10 ratio
• Chicken and beef were served in the same way for all days. They were boiled in low heat when making homemade broth, then minced with the blender (no water added, not a puree >> add in water or broth if you want to make it puree), stir-fry with extra virgin olive oil or unsalted butter before serving to add fat.
• All the grilled food was actually pan-grilled or cooked in the non-stick pan without oil
• Fruits or vegetable puree could be homemade puree or instant jarred puree. We receive WIC benefits for Musa, so he got quite a lot of branded puree.

In this first month, Musa was aimed for having mealtime at least twice a day with one “big meal”. That is why, if we look at the table, he had only meal with multiple food groups at lunch time. I found that afternoon was the easiest time to give him big meal because he was used to be in the peak of his activities, so necessarily felt hungry and would eat his foods. I just needed to strive for preparing his lunch before 2 or 3 PM since he might want another nap at that time. Musa almost never skips his first nap at 9 or 10 AM (he wakes up early along with us around 6 AM), so his breakfast should be something quick and he loves to eat. He’s normally still sleepy and not too interested to foods. As much as possible, I don’t expect a struggle in breakfast. For those reasons, fruit or vegetable is the best choice to serve, either in puree (spoon-feeding) or its original form (baby self-feeding). Also, since this month, I’ve also already given Musa chance to eat by himself (a la BLW baby) at least once a day.