As someone who has an extreme fascination with food, getting ready for my daughter’s first solid food was an exciting time.  We waited to introduce solids until she was 6 months old, and by that point, she was just rearing for some “real” food – she was always making lip smacking sounds whenever she saw us eating, and wanted in on the “good stuff”.

Her first food was sweet potato – and of course, not just any type of sweet potato…it was a Japanese sweet potato, which is one of my favorite varieties.  I was also excited that her first food was going to be from my CSA.  We went with 5 days of the same food before switching to the next to ensure we didn’t come across any stomach upsets or allergies. She barely ate a tablespoon in each serving, as this was really about her learning to push food to the back of her mouth. Here’s a clip of her first bite!

Other great first foods are carrots, green beans and spinach.  We held off on offering peas, broccoli and cauliflower – peas because the outer skin is difficult to digest and broccoli/cauliflower can make babies gassy.  I soon learned that those veggies were great to mix in with other vegetables when serving.

As a side note, we did try rice cereal in a couple of meals, but in the end, I found that it just made my daughter’s stomach upset – we decided to skip the cereals, and stuck to fruits, vegetables, grains and legumes when she was ready.