When we first started the kid on solid foods, we went with the cereal route, testing rice, oatmeal, barley, in turn, making sure the kid didn't have a bad reaction to them. [This solid food introduction process is covered well in books you probably already have, like What To Expect The First Year, and Brazelton mentions it all along in Touchpoints, but he really wants you to buy Feeding The Brazelton Way, which is crafty, but good.]
Anyway, as we got to the Cheerios stage (oats were a problem, and we backed off and reintroduced a couple of times.), I thought, what about tofu? It's easy to chew, tastes like nothing, and it's full of protein. Plus, I'll bet a billion babies in Asia eat it ten times a day. No go. The kid couldn't be bothered even to crumble it up, much less put it in her mouth and spit it out.
Flash forward to this week, when the kid's been practicing her fork skills, and will apparently eat anything--including things like chicken or beef that she normally won't touch--as long as it's on the end of a fork. That she puts in her mouth herself. Now she's a tofu junkie.
I cut a 3/4-inch slab of extra firm tofu into little fork-wide cubes, put them in a bowl, and put a few drops, literally, of low-sodium soy sauce on them [because have you ever tasted tofu?], and then I pre-spear a couple for her. She pounds that stuff like it's raisins and Pop-Tarts, let me tell you. She likes it, and she likes likin' it. And I get a stupid thrill out of saying, "Come on, kid, let's go have some tofu" to her at the park.
I have people for this kind of thing [they're called Korean deli owners], but if you refuse to buy tofu on principle, the SoyQuick Automatic Soy Milk Maker is $99.95 [warning: unnecessarily slow-moving ordering mechanism alert]
My girl likes tofu too. We fish it out of the miso soup for her our fave local (Japanese) restaurant; we feed her the rice from our teriyaki tofu and we pull the avocado out of the veggie california rolls.. She's loves it all. She's also a big fan of the local mexican place--only eats the guacamole so far--but we're hoping she continues to like ethnic food so we can avoid ever visiting those golden arches.
Pre baby, we fed tofu to the cat....
Got to watch out though, too much tofu can stop up the kid's innards......
Ours, he loves tofu, too--but he really digs "silken" (extra soft) kind. Especially when he's sick, and doesn't want to swallow anything, it's great.
Tofu's definitely in every single Japanese baby recipe book we've bought (we're Tokyoites). Me and the kid like it in corn soup.