When Josiah turned 6 months, I skipped feeding him the conventional Asian porridge and decided on pureed Fruits and Vegetable instead. When he turned 1 year old though, he got sick of it. He wanted to eat Real food, but at the same time he couldn’t chew or digest properly. If I gave him rice, he would eat some and vomit out some, including meat and all. So in the end, I realised the goodness of rice porridge and went on that route. I bought a small slow cooker and started cooking porridge for him at nights, and by morning I bring over the porridge in a thermos, and he’ll eat the reheated porridge again at nights. For breakfast, he now eats pureed fruits with cereal, and cut fruits for tea break.
My best method
After endless headache and thinking of the best method, I chose to cook myself. Initially, I let my baby sitter cook, but I guess I just didn’t like the kind of watery white rice porridge with very little vegetable type. So at nights, I cut the vegetables and freeze them in small plastic containers, those tau fu fa type. I also freeze cut up pieces of meat, in my fridge I have pork, chicken, chicken liver, salmon and cod fish. So every night after putting the little man to bed, I would wash the brown rice I use Eco brown) and put it in the slow cooker and just dump all the vege and meat in there, letting it cook for 2 hours, and then stop, and then it will start cooking again from 3am to 7am. By morning, the porridge is nice and soft. For this, of course I needed a timer.
My Best recipe
After trying out all kinds of vege and meat, here are my favourite taste.
1) Pumpkin, Apple, Pork Brown rice porridge
2) Red Lentils, Sweet Potato, Chicken, Cauliflower rice porridge
3) Brocolli, carrot, salmon rice porridge
4) Parsnip, Pumpkin, Chicken liver rice porridge
5) Butter, Rice, Cod fish, Brocolli, Cheese, (trying to make cheese baked rice type)
6) Carrot, peas, corn, chicken porridge
Occasionally I mix in pureed Spinach, mix some dried anchovies, green beans, dried longan, barley, other root vegetables like beetroot, which are rare. But the above are the staple that are always in my fridge. Sometimes on weekends he might prefer to eat fried rice, but I found that he pretty much disliked pasta just like the dad. I know eventually he will stop eating porridge altogether, so let’s just see how it goes.