An Indian Perspective (my interview with Sandra)

Hi Abbie!

Ever since your post on annaprasan I have been meaning to go back to my notes from an interview with my friend Sandra to see if she touched on this first-food tradition. While I didn't find any mention of it, I did enjoy reading back over her thoughtful and detailed answers and decided to go ahead and post them now before the craziness of holiday travels leaves me happily stranded in Indiana without internet access :) I haven't yet tried her recipe for kichri, as my son is too little for it at 5 months, but I'm looking forward to it. I hope you and your family have a very happy holiday season!


On traditional first foods: "In India, babies are usually nursed until about 9 months of age, sometimes longer. Solid foods are introduced at 3 months of age. One of the first solids is a cereal derived from rice which is thought to be most easily digested. This would be cooked into a thin gruel and called "conji". Nowadays the most common brands for babies cereal are "Farex" and "Cerelac" that is usually mixed with formula to form a runny porridge. Other first foods are mashed banana, and when the child is a little older, at about 6 months, vegetables cooked and in chicken or beef broth and then pureed and strained."

On more "advanced" infant foods: "The most common food for children around 1 year old is a dish called "kichri" (recipe at end of interview). This is rice and lentils cooked together until it becomes very soft. Other foods would be rice and yogurt, custard, a piece of chapati (Indian flat bread that looks like a tortilla), buttered rice, and fish (especially where I grew up along the coast). This was simply a spoonful of butter stirred into a cup of just-cooked rice with fish either poached or sauteed. Children were always given sweeter tasting river fish (with skin and bones removed) instead of the sea fish."

On taboo foods: "No crustaceans as they were considered difficult to digest. No fruit called custard apple similar to cherimoya, since it has small seeds that could pose a choking hazard. No uncooked eggs and no caffeinated drinks."

On medicinal or health-promoting foods: "Honey (given only to children older than 3 years), milk, onion juice cooked with sugar - remedy for colds, porridge made out of ragi (millet) flour was supposed to be good for overall health, other grain porridges made from oatmeal, whole wheat flour, semolina (cream of wheat) and sago (starch extracted from the pith inside stems of the sago palm Metroxylon), coconut water from tender (green) coconuts is considered cooling in hot weather."

On liquids given to babies: "Milk is the primary liquid. Cow's milk is only introduced after the child is 1 year old. Formula milk is becoming increasingly common. Rice starch (ie water collected after boiling rice) is also given. Babies are not given fruit juices to drink."

On the feeding of babies: "Usually it is the mother who feeds the baby. Previously in the joined family with extended family members present others would pitch in to feed the baby. Most middle and upper class families would have a nanny or "ayah". She was a servant of importance who worked with the family for many years performing the role of lady's maid as well. We look upon ayahs with great affection as she was like a second mother to us. Fussy eaters would be made to eat by distracting them with songs or bird/animal noises. Milk is fed in a bottle. For all other semi-solid and solid foods babies are spoon fed. It was not uncommon for the ayah to put small morsels of food in the child's mouth with her fingers. Babies were fed before their older siblings. Having spent my childhood in India and having brought up my own children here I can see the difference in expectations re:when a child ought to feed itself. In India the ayah would feed the child until 5 or 6 years of age. Whereas here children are encouraged to feed themselves as soon as they have the motor skills to do so."

"Here are some of my favorite toddler foods: Fresh fruit - especially diced mango, "Eggy soldiers" Soft boiled egg with butter toast fingers to dip into the yolk, Custard. Ready-made or bottled baby food was not favored - all food was made using fresh ingredients. Indians are quite fastidious about this."

"Here's my home recipe for kichri - interestingly this is believed to be the origin of the Anglo-Indian rice dish called "kedgeree":

- 1 cup rice
- 1/2 cup yellow lentils (moong dal)
- 2 cups water
- 1 tbsp butter
- pinch of salt
Wash the rice and lentils till the water runs clear.
Put in a large saucepan with 2 cups water and a pinch salt.
Bring to a boil on medium heat then partially cover the sauce pan and simmer till the rice and lentils are soft and the water is absorbed.
Stir in the butter
The water in the above recipe can be replaced with chicken broth."

More on Early Fruits

Hi Abbie!

Wow, the figures you posted regarding the amount of fertilizer required to cultivate bananas are staggering! I'm surprised, given that bananas are the most often consumed fruit in the world (at least according to an old trivial pursuit question). We had been avoiding them for our son for another reason (his ongoing struggle with constipation), but this definitely complicates matters further... I found the whole article you linked us to interesting and upsetting; it helped remind me that in this day and age, with so much information and choice available to us, we have an obligation to do the best we can for our planet, our children, each other... This philosophy should apply whether we're talking about the fanciest "adult" recipes or our children's "first foods."

As for alternative "first fruit" traditions, I haven't uncovered much beyond what you mentioned. Many of my friends and cousins with children also started with bananas. In the interview from my friend Sandra (see next post), bananas are mentioned as a common early fruit in India, and mangoes came up as an "all-time baby favorite." Infants and Children: Their Feeding and Growth by Frederic H. Bartlett, M.D., (NY: 1932), which I referenced in an earlier post, suggests apples and prunes as first fruits, followed by banana, peaches, pears, plums, apricots, and red raspberries ("don't worry about the seeds") - all stewed except for the very ripe bananas (p. 60-61). Pears and peaches come up over and over as "first fruits" in the books on baby nutrition I've borrowed from our local Women's Center.

I have read in several places that babies should wait until the one year mark before trying citrus fruits due to their high acidity and propensity for causing allergic reactions. Then again, your research shows that Kenyan mothers start oranges early (at 3 months), and my friend from Nicaragua named orange juice and lemonade as early and health-promoting foods. The advice tome from the 1930s recommends orange juice beginning at 2 months (hehe). So, who knows? How old was your son when he first tried citrus?

So far, the only fruits my son has tasted are prunes and pears (OK, my husband pointed out that technically most of his foods have been fruits (squash, avocado, etc.), but you know what I mean!). We'll probably start apples next. I'll keep my eyes peeled for more opinions and information on early fruit traditions!

The banana dilemma

Hi Marjorie!

Today, as I dropped my son off at his daycare, another parent mentioned that her little 5 month old had just tried bananas. It was clearly a big milestone for the family: their little girl tried a fruit after a month of just cereal. I know that bananas are likely the first fruit of choice in most American households. They are easy to mash up, require no cooking and have a sweet, bland taste. Now that I am packing toddler lunches, I admit that I often fall back on them. On my mornings of hurried lunch bag filling, it is easy to rip one off the bunch and jam it in next to the yogurt and cheese slices. And they are cheap.

I still can't figure out why bananas are as cheap as they are, and I'm sure the answer will make me uncomfortable as an aspiring conscientious consumer. They need to be shipped from tropical locales. Yet they can cost less per pound than the apples that come from right outside the city. Bananas also require a startling amount of fertilizer per cultivated acre (427 pounds versus 35 pounds for peas or beans). So why is the cost of that fertilizer not passed along to us? Even this superficial consideration of the economics points to another unsettling truth: bananas are not a good environmental choice. Imagine the carbon footprint, given the transcontinental diesel shipping! So, why do we as American families, continue to serve our children bananas, when we could serve them locally grown apples or low-fertilized green peas? I'm not sure why bananas continue to be such a staple in this country, but one reason, for sure, is that they have cornered the market as a first food.

Apples, pears and plums all have their place in the baby fruit pantheon here, I suspect largely thanks to prepackaged Gerber purees. While citrus is not common here, my research shows that Kenyan mothers do feed their 3 month olds oranges. Indonesian mothers serve porridges fortified with both banana and papaya. I know your own mother-in-law identified watermelon as a common baby fruit in Taiwan. Have you found any other fruit traditions? Bananas make more sense to me as a baby food in Indonesia or Ecuador...there, they are locally grown. This may be the last week of bananas in my own household. Good thing my kid likes apples!

Re: Rites of Passage

Hi Abbie!

You are so right to highlight the universal interest in the initial feedings of a young baby. With our little-one just out of the starting-gate with solid foods, my husband and I chose to skip the public display of eating at The Big Family Thanksgiving with forty guests, most of whom were meeting our son for the first time. Part of me felt guilty about this, like I was hoarding him for myself, but my concerns about him being overwhelmed by the crowd's enthusiasm won the day. We, I suspect like most Americans, chose to videotape our son's first bites to preserve the memory. That way, family and friends will be able to experience it without upsetting the intimacy of the moment for our nuclear family.

Like you, I do wish there were an established tradition in our culture that celebrated a baby's first non-milk meal with more than just Mom and Dad. When I spoke to my Taiwanese mother-in-law about this concept after reading your post, she said there is a tradition in Taiwan that sounds very similar to annaprasan, the ritual first feeding of an infant in the Indian tradition. A number of objects are laid out in front of a four-month-old baby, whose fate is supposedly determined by which article he grabs. She named scissors (a tailor), scales (a merchant), an abacus (a businessman), and a book/pen (an "intellectual"). I had a hard time with "scissors", but it was the first thing she named - and very enthusiastically. No other professions surfaced despite less-than-unbiased-professional prompting.

Another ritual that my mother-in-law had already observed for her own sons and my own was at their one-month birthday. She made yu-bung (oily rice with cabbage, mushroom, pork, scallions, etc.) and ang-nung (red hard-boiled eggs "like at easter") for the family and neighborhood - I think in celebration of a viable new life that was "out of the woods" so to speak, common in many cultures.

Finally, she mentioned tying a cord covered in bread, strung through a central hole ("like bagels") around a four-month-old baby's neck to ward off future problems with drooling. Afterward, the adults eat the delicious bread, drool and all. I have a hunch there are more interesting rituals to be discovered at a later time...

Back to your post - my guess is that you are correct in supposing that annaprasan is more of a ceremonial first than an actual one. This appeals to me in that it preserves the actual first-feeding for parents, but invites shared participation from the larger community in celebration of a baby's induction into the exciting, new world of eating. I am hoping we will stage just such an event when our families are next together later this season!

Love,
Marjorie

Rites of passage

Hi Marjorie!

You have asked what first foods I gave to my own baby, and when I introduced oils and spices. Memories fade so quickly -- I had to go back and look at his baby journal (if you can even call it that!). I wish I had had the time and scrap-booking talent to produce a detailed archive of his infancy, but it is just a plain notebook with absentmindedly jotted down entries every month or so. It seems like he ate mostly avocado, spinach and sweet potatoes from age 6 to 8 months. Then I slowly introduced chopped up foods that we were eating, with the chili heat level dialed down. During his big teething time around 8 to 9 months, I gave him a chicken leg bone (with the sharp pin bone removed) that had some meat on it, and let him chomp away. You have to be careful, though, because sometimes he gnawed so hard he got the cartilage off. All of this is not to say that solid foods were a big part of his life. Up to about 9 months old, only ate them once or twice a day, and largely subsisted on nursing. It seems like your little one might switch over to a larger proportion of solids much more quickly -- he ate a quarter cup on his first go, after all!

I loved hearing about the first taste of food! It made me so sad that I can't be there to see your adorable little guy guzzling down some Delicata squash or prunes. The feeding of babies is something that EVERYONE wants to participate in -- having just passed Thanksgiving, I remembered back to my son's first holiday. He wasn't eating solids, but several people wanted to give him a taste of pumpkin pie or whipped cream. Even the more laid-back folks really wanted to watch, if not offer tastes. As a mom, it stressed me out to say no and I remember wishing that I could just feed my kid the way I wanted to feed him, privately. Now, as an honorary aunt to your son, I am really burning to watch you feed him a little taste of something and watch his reaction. I love him and you, and it is so interesting to observe first experiences! Now I have more sympathy for my Thanksgiving family.

This dilemma of public/private feeding can be hard to negotiate. My husband and I felt really strongly that we wanted some experiences to be ours and ours alone with our son (the birth, the first feeding, certain celebrations). Sometimes, I felt selfish excluding people in our lives, especially grandparents, but I also wasn't comfortable with an expectation that loving family members somehow get an all-access pass to every experience. I wanted to treasure these fleeting moments, not feel pressure as a hostess or walk the minefield of well-intentioned but sometimes unwelcome advice. How to balance all of this? I do want to honor the community that is helping to raise my child, and include them in the celebration of his growth.

Two ideas for a public celebration have emerged in my research, one from Sudan and one from India. My Sudanese colleague described how, on the occasion of the emergence of a first tooth, an infant's family brings a large dish of a special rice pudding to the local temple. Usually the mother or grandmother prepares the dish. So when a family at the mosque is eating or sharing rice pudding, the members of the community always ask who has cut their first teeth. There is no exact recipe, but it is usually rice simmered with milk, sugar, and raisins. Nuts and coconut are optional based on the family's taste. This seems like a sweet and easy way to involve the larger community in an important event in a baby's life.

Another idea is the Bengali tradition of annaprasan, the ritual first feeding of rice. Usually this occurs when a child is 6 months old, while sitting on a grandparents lap. I need to investigate further whether this is truly a first feeding of solids, or just a ritual "first feeding". I suspect the latter. This rite of passage has been on my research radar screen for a while -- and then just this past week, Jhumpa Lahiri wrote a small piece on the topic in the New Yorker (here's the link to the piece) There are myriad instructions out there on the web as to how the ritual is performed, and what recipe to use for the rice. One of my favorite discussion threads (here's the link), states that part of the tradition is to offer the child different objects, representing future endeavors (i.e. if he touches the pen, he will be a poet). This ritual is the part of a larger cultural and religious practice, and certainly I am not proposing that we all adopt this tradition wholesale. But the idea behind it is charming, and gives an organized way for the larger community to observe a baby's milestone. I know I would have loved to participate in your son's annaprasan, or some version thereof.

Love, Abbie

Our First Solid Food Experience

Hi Abbie!

I really enjoyed reading about the rich, early flavor experiences you described in your last post. It gives me hope for so many of us young parents who were ourselves brought up during the jarred baby food craze and who are now on a hunt to rediscover another way - from another time or another place - something more real. Thank you for sharing some of your little one's early favorites; I can't wait to try them out when my guy is a bit farther along!

For weeks, we've been watching our four-month-old eye our meals greedily while bringing whatever he had in his hand to his mouth for a "taste." At last, it was time, and we presented him with his very own helping of steamed, pureed delicata squash. It took him one messy attempt to get the hang of opening his mouth wide for the spoon, and we had to cut him off after he'd downed a quarter of a cup, because I wasn't sure how his insides would take to so much of a new substance. A rousing success! We waited a couple of days before introducing our next choice, avocado, the cost of which is normally prohibitive in our neck of the woods, but which were miraculously three for two dollars this week at our co-op. Alas, its sophisticated subtlety was lost on him, and I was forced to eat most of it.

Peas and prunes followed in close succession. (Because my son drinks soy formula, he tends to get constipated. My midwife suggested we stick to the letter "P," like peas, pears, prunes. I am wondering about oatmeal? Do you have any other suggestions? I know he'll love bananas, but I'm scared about their constipating tendency...). We steamed and pureed the peas much like the squash, with a little extra water. For the prunes - we roughly chopped organic, unsulfurated prunes, added a little water and cooked them in a sauce pan for a few minutes, until their skins had softened. In order to avoid making a very sticky, thick paste, the prunes required substantially more water than the other foods we had prepared. Our son enjoyed the peas and warmed up to the prunes after some initial sour/perplexed expressions. We froze the surplus (except for the avocado) in ice cube trays overnight and popped them out the next morning into a freezer bag.

My husband, son, and I have had lots of fun with this first solid food experience. Even though we still have many new "plain" flavors to try, I am already wondering things like, "when are spices OK?" and "How much solid in addition to his soy milk is reasonable - like how many times a day, etc.?" For now, we plan to stick with single foods for a few more staples, like carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, apples,green beans, etc., but I know that very soon I will want our son to try squash prepared our grown-up way with ginger, a little sugar, and a little oil. Having started solids at four months and three days, he is on the young end of the currently-preached-in-the-USA spectrum, so I do have concerns about the readiness of his digestive system for all of this...I am wondering how long I should wait before introducing him to something more involved, like your saag panir recipe from the last post.

Another concern I have about making my own baby food stems from a section of the pamphlet I referenced last time from the American Academy of Pediatrics, Starting Solid Foods (revised 2008). They warn, "Do not feed your baby home-prepared beets, turnips, carrots, spinach, or collard greens in the first year of life. In some parts of the country, these vegetables have large amounts of nitrates, chemicals that can cause an unusual type of anemia in young babies. Baby food companies are aware of this problem and screen the produce they buy for nitrates. They also avoid buying these vegetables in parts of the country where nitrates have been found. Thus it is safer to use commercially prepared forms of these foods during the first year of life." As I looked into this issue more thoroughly, it seems that the problem has little to do with commercial vs. homemade baby food, but more to do with the maturity of a baby's digestive system and its ability to destroy certain bacteria that change nitrates into nitrites, which impair hemoglobin's ability to carry oxygen. An article I found very helpful in clarifying the phenomenon can be found at http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/nitratearticle.htm. The consensus from this and other sources seems to be that if a baby is over three months old, their digestive system is advanced enough to handle the naturally occurring nitrates which are found in a number of foods. Interesting issue that could be confusing for the home-baby food chef.

I would love to hear about some of your very early, just-started-solids experiences, like when you introduced oils, salts, spices, etc. Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family!

Marjorie

Picky eating? Nah!

Hi Marjorie!

Your post really summed up the challenges we have been discussing. In stark contrast, I spent yesterday afternoon with a young father from Yemen who has a 6 month old. With Grandma's guidance, the baby had been eating pureed vegetable soup for the past few months (Amazing, isn't it, how vegetable-based soups seem to be emerging in our research as an an almost universal first food?). This Friday is an important Muslim holiday, and Grandma is baking a whole lamb, stuffed with rice, herbs and ground meat. He was looking forward to the baby tasting the meat. When I mentioned your discovery of the concern over the "strong flavor" of meat, he snickered. He said any baby in his family better get used to strong flavor -- that's what their food is all about. "No picky eaters!" He declared. "That's very American!"

With my own son, 8 to 12 months was a magic window, when he greedily ate any thing "strongly flavored" that came his way. I thought maybe that was just a quirk, but then this past Sunday, the New York Times Magazine ran a food column by Pete Wells (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/magazine/15food-t-000.html?_r=1&ref=dining). He discussed his young son Dexter and how amazed his family was to see how open Dexter was to new flavors when he was an infant of 7 to 8 months. Then, writes Wells, Dexter began turning against previously well-loved foods:

"He discovered things not to like in experiences that previously brought him only pleasure. A lot of parents call this picky eating. I think it was just the birth of that consciousness that, for the rest of his life, will shadow his joys with the knowledge that nothing is as ever good as it could be".

I was really moved by this idea, as well as by Well's suggestion that the movie "Ratatouille" taught his then-toddler how to appreciate new flavors and new taste combinations once again. We will get it from Netflix soon!

Here are two favorite recipes from the period of my son's early openness to new flavors. This is not to say he then rejected all of his favorite early foods. Green peas stirred into a meaty bolognese sauce, a staple of that period, remains his favorite meal. The sauce is loaded with garlic, herbs, tomatoes, and Italian sausage. Now we add pasta for him, but initially it was just peas and sauce (incidentally, one of his first word combinations as well). Note that one of the following recipes has nuts: take it or leave it. I fed it to him by mistake, and he didn't have any reaction. He loved it so much, I kept feeding it to him. I know, I know. Call the allergy police. I'm sure horror stories abound, and thankfully it didn't happen to me. Every mom can make her own decision on this one.

Farro and Porcini Risotto: http://www.marthastewart.com/portal/site/mslo/menuitem.aced15a43a1d10e593598e10d373a0a0/?vgnextoid=a2e76f3988f09110VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&vgnextchannel=0dd9349d52e38110VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&vgnextfmt=print&currentslide=1&page=1

Saag Panir (adapted from Suneeta Vaswani's Complete Book of Indian Cooking)

2 Tbsp oil
1 1/2 cups chopped onion
1 Tbsp minced or grated ginger
pinch of red chili flakes (optional -- best to leave it out the first time)
2 Tbsp coriander powder
1 tsp turmeric
2 10-oz packages frozen spinach, thawed
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 cup nonfat milk or soy milk
2 cups plain yogurt
2 tsp cornstarch
1 package of panir (bland Indian cheese -- if you can't find it, use firm tofu, cut into cubes

1. Heat oil in a large saucepan. Add onions, ginger and chili flakes, if using, and saute over medium heat until soft and pale golden.

2. Stir in coriander and turmeric and saute, stirring well, 2-3 minutes.

3. Add spinach and salt. Cover and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool slightly. In a blender, puree spinach with milk and return mixture to pot; alternatively, add milk to pot and puree with a blender stick.

4. Place pot over low heat. Stir yogurt and cornstarch together than add to spinach mixture. Add panir and mix gently. Covered and simmer until heated through, about 10 minutes.