Monday 24 October 2016

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Day 5: Baby's First Food - The Mighty Ginger/Ingefær/姜[jiāng]



As Chinese, we all know the mighty goodness in ginger, but it is an acquired taste, easiest to cultivate when young. 

I decided to go ahead to introduce ginger to Baby C today, although she is shy of 6 months old.

My experience is that once the window of introducing food to baby is past, it is an uphill task, and there are so many food I want to introduce to Baby C. With J, because I was afraid of the allergy that tomatoes may cause, I introduced it to him too late when he was 1 year old. Until today, he refused to eat tomatoes. He is also not fond of yogurt for the same reason. In general, experts said the window is between 8 to 9 months old, and that seemed to match my experience with J.

So if baby starts on solid at 6 months, and one has only 2-3 months to introduce 50-60 items (those items on my list), and if one also waits 4 days in between each new introduction, it would essentially be a close to impossible task.

Ginger is not on the list of food causing allergy, and in general Asian kids are not so prone to allergy.

I would like Baby C to get used to the flavor of ginger - not necessarily eating it. So I added a piece of ginger while cooking her millet puree, and then fished it out again after 5 minutes. In this way, the ginger's flavor gets into the puree, but she is not eating the ginger.

As expected, Baby C wasn't clapping her hands and asking for more. This, afterall, wasn't candy, but ginger. But she has tasted it, and it is a step towards acquiring a taste for it. Rome isn't conquered overnight.



Add a slice of ginger when cooking porridge/puree for baby.



As I want only the flavoring, take the ginger out again after 5-10 minutes, depending on how strong favor you desire.

You can read my original post on ginger as baby's first food when J was a baby here.


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