Nora’s babyhood now feels like a golden age of food acceptance.
She became noticeably pickier once she hit her first birthday, seemingly overnight. The list below documents what she ate during the period between 6 months and 1 year. She has since started refusing many of these items. Even though this is to be expected developmentally, and even though we set out with the goal of introducing as many flavors as possible before pickiness set in, it’s still a little frustrating to read this list and realize how easy we had it back then.
All items are listed in approximate reverse chronological order of introduction.
Spoon Feeding
Instant Love
- Instant Pot lentils with lamb broth
- Instant Pot red bean chili
- carrot peanut soup
- sardines
- pork ribs with a little bone marrow
- goat yogurt
- duck eggs
- Israeli couscous with vinaigrette dressing
- baba ganoush
- hummus
- stew
- beef
- lamb
- meatloaf
- beef
- pork
- lamb
- barley soup with eggs, spinach, and brown rice
- yogurt
- shrimp
- fish
- salmon
- sole
- black cod
- chicken and matzo ball soup
- avocado
- chickpeas
- eggs
- sweet potatoes
Vehicles for Veggies
- salad dressing
- butter
- fish
- meat
- yogurt
- eggs
- avocado
Veggies With Fat (see above)
At 10 months, Nora did eat plain steamed baby kale after an offering of buttered kale. And she ate bites of plain wakame between bites of lamb meatloaf. So the aversion to plain veggies is fading, but we’ll continue to offer veggies with a little fat because that’s how we eat it ourselves.
- mashed boiled daikon radish (with vinaigrette salad dressing)
- minced cooked green beans (with butter)
- sauteed fava beans with garlic
- cooked, finely diced tomatoes
- steamed kale
- steamed arugula
- steamed spinach
- stir-fried chard
- stir-fried cabbage
- steamed carrots
Ingredients and Components
- lentils
- chili beans
- black-eyed peas
- miso
- butter
- millet
- radishes
- green peas
- potatoes
- tomatoes
- kefir
- asparagus
- broccoli
- pistachios
- walnuts
- tahini
- mushrooms
- ginger
- chili peppers
- garlic
- onion
- olive oil
- tahini
- almond butter
- peanut butter
Less Preferred, but Will Eat
- oatmeal with yogurt, walnuts, and chia seeds
- (badly overcooked) liver, onions, and apples
- caviar (only tried this once!)
- tofu
- sesame noodles
- minced tempeh with broccoli (ate small amounts after repeated failures with tempeh)
Tough Sells
- green peas (efforts to spoon-feed are often unsuccessful, but she did grab a few off her plate with her fingers once, much to our surprise)
- corn kernels (will eat with avocado/black bean/tomato salad, but rejects on its own)
- beets (will eat with yogurt, but not eggs)
- millet when not cooked mushy (ate around and rejected individual grains while eating the avocado and greens that were mixed with it)
- olives
Finger Foods
Eats
- chocolate chip cookie (for her birthday)
- French fries (after rejecting when much younger)
- whole plums
- udon noodles (lots of fun to play with and slurp down)
- hardboiled eggs (yolks make a huge mess)
- whole peaches (smart enough to spit out the pit)
- cooked carrots
- sweet potato fries
- cheese
- chicken
- chunked or sliced fruit
- apriums
- peaches
- apricots
- kiwi
- watermelon
- cantaloupe
- bananas
- berries
- blackberries
- raspberries
- blueberries
- strawberries
- citrus wedges
- oranges
- limes
- lemons
- bread
Inconsistent – sometimes eats, sometimes rejects
- green peas (only once)
- cooked carrots
- Asian salad turnips
- cucumber slices
- puffs
- pasta spirals
Rejects
- cooked green bean (nibbled but didn’t swallow)
- broccoli
- black beans
Restaurant Food
Eats
- soft diced veggies in red sauce (Mexican)
- diced raw tomato with guacamole
- lentils
- spicy tamarind dish
- spicy dal
- hamburger
- pho with brisket and tendons
- refried beans
- black beans
- guacamole
- enchiladas in green sauce
- spicy Pad Thai
- baba ganoush
- hummus
- mashed dim sum (shrimp, beef, tofu, glutinous rice)
- omlettes and scrambles
- pizza crust
- garlic bread
Rejects
- mashed pizza toppings (hit or miss)
Baby Loves Fat 