Dominic was introduced to solid food when he was 6 months old.  I have been cooking his baby food from scratch.  Instant cereal was only included for emergency situations (run out of food!) and for his meals outside.  His meals are mainly Chinese food (porridge), although I do try to expose him to other tastes by giving him beef stew, minestrone soup (with plenty of Italian herbs), chawan mushi, etc.

Baby Food - My Method

As I mentioned in "Freeze! ", I usually cook a large batch of baby food and freeze.  It's time-saving and less wastage.

Generally, what I did was to cook a porridge base, and freeze them into individual portions.  When Dominic first started solids, the porridge base was usually brown rice porridge with nothing.  For a meal, I could then add expressed breastmilk into it to make brown rice cereal.  As he grew older, I added more varieties, mainly chicken and fish porridge. Apart from the porridge base, I made veggie ice cubes.  For a meal, I would take a couple of veggie ice cubes and add them to the porridge base.  That way, he would get a relatively balance diet of meat (in the porridge) and veggie and carbohydrates (the rice).

My Tools

When Dominic was younger, most of his food had to be pureed.  I find it very useful to have a food processor (blender/miller) to do the pureeing. As he grew older, I just cooked the food until they were soft and mushy, yet having more texture than food puree.  The food processor became less and less used, except when the food was too hard or tough.  For veggies, instead of pureeing them like before, I use a knife to chop them.  By the way, I have a chopping board that is dedicated to making Dominic's food.