Feeding the most important epicurean in the world

This month has been rather more exhausting than usual. Ethan likes his solids a little too much (in retrospect, I should have seen this coming!) and has been kicking up a huge fuss at milk time and cutting down on his milk intake drastically. This has been going on for the past three weeks and I'm tired out from the histronics and tantrums!

Why not let him be and eat all the solids he wants? Well, at this age, milk is still by far the most important and complete food source for babies - solids are meant for supplementation and experimentation. Also, when Ethan takes less milk he then suffers from constipation and gets all cranky and grumpy. No fun I assure you.

I have to crack my brains to get him to take more milk - including persuasion (delay his feed by half an hour), bluffing (cook or mix milk into his solids), stealth (feed him while he is asleep). PHEW!!

On the bright side, while it's a lot of work feeding the pampered prince, it can actually be exciting and fun too.

Fruit puree, served as part of breakfast and lunch: pear, apple, prune, cherry, peach, papaya....

I steam and puree the fruits, then dollop them into ice cube trays for easy portioning. At each meal, he gets two hearts of assorted fruits.

Homemade stock is used for cooking his porridge: beef, pork, chicken, and in this case, fish.

I put the stock, together with wholegrain rice, a portion of meat/fish, and a portion of vegetable (pumpkin, butternut squash, peas, or spinach) into the slow cooker, and it produces porridge 3 hours later.

A dollop of homemade ikan bilis (dried anchovy) powder goes into his porridge, to up his calcium intake since he is taking a lot less milk now.

At teatime, Ethan usually gets avocado puree, mixed with milk. Avocado is by far his favourite food - he can eat up to half an avocado at one sitting - and for that I am glad cos it's powerpacked with nutrition and healthy fats / protein, and cos I can mix in lots of milk into his puree!