Vegetable Curry

A great thing about introducing solid foods to your baby using baby-led solids is that you can develop your baby's flavor palate early. Example: curry! Don't be nervous to give your baby spicy foods. If you regularly eat spicy or strong flavors, then your baby has already tasted them via amniotic fluid and breastmilk. Besides, have you ever thought about what Indian babies eat when they're starting out on solid foods? I'm sure they don't even bat an eye at curry!

Our vegetable curry recipe comprised: tofu, cauliflower, chick peas (very soft), onions and sweet potato. Though I didn't know it at the time, I made the mistake of trying this meal when Buttercup was in a crabby mood. At first she wouldn't even touch the pile of food I gave her. I gave her a slice of banana try and pique her interest in food, and suddenly she was sampling all the food on her tray.

Buttercup ate leftovers for lunch the next day and ate a ton of it. Of course, everyone knows that curry is always better the next day.

PROS: great for building adventurous eaters

CONS: somewhat messy/staining

Sweet potato

This meal was an instant hit! Buttercup LOVED it! She loved it so much she was squealing the whole time!

I selected a small sweet potato and baked it, let it cool, then peeled the skin off. I cut it into quarters and put them on the tray of Buttercup's brand new high chair. Props to Grandpa's mad wood-working skills (and Grandma's sewing)!

sidenote: I've been meaning to say that I never put food to Buttercup's mouth. I put it by her hand and let her grab it and put it in her mouth on her own. That's what I do with her toys so we already have mutual understanding.

Buttercup's attention span definitely grew during this meal. She sat contentedly smooshing food and mawing on it for our entire

dinnertime. It's interesting how each time we offer her food more of it ends up in her belly, too. This was evidenced both by how little was left of the sweet potato and by how many little orange chunks I found in her diaper the next day. While I'm on the topic of diapers (though this is NOT a blog about cloth diapering...), I just folded her newly laundered cloth diapers and they had stains for the first time. *SNIFF* Goodbye, days of exclusively breastfed poopies and your magical non-staining properties. Oh well, it had to happen someday.

PROS: she loved it!

CONS: like all things that are squishy, Buttercup vice-gripped it to a pulp (check out the photo).

P.S. I just learned that the sweet potato is the #1 ranking vegetable for nutrition value!