Giving baby your meal

[loz]

Can I just ask - what do other people do about giving your baby the meals that you have?

My problems with this are:

A lot of the stuff I eat has sauces which have sugar and salt in them e.g. pasta sauce, curry sauce, etc - I dont really want to give her stuff like that. I could just give Emms the veg and pasta with some cheese mashed up but it would be a bit boring. With a curry I could just give her the veg and rice but again it is a bit boring without the curry sauce. I put quorn in stuff as i am a veggie - can I give that to her too?

Trying to make a meal before she gets too tired in the evening is very difficult, esp when I am working. I usually make batches of stuff and freeze it and give her 3 cubes of it for her meal with a few finger foods like cheese, toast etc. She also has banana and fromage frais every day.

Also Emms seems to be quite fussy and my worry is that if I give her stuff that I have and she wont eat it, she will go hungry unless I have back-up food but if it takes too long, she gets too tired and then refuses to eat altogether.

Am I making this more difficult than it is? What are other people doing?

 

[LisaJ1986]

I've bought Angel some stock cubes. So if i have meals she can't really have the sauces to, i make up some of the stock.

 

[poppy160]

You could make your own sauces. I don't give Ella curry, we tried her with curry from a baby jar on holiday and she hated it. But for things like her spaghetti bolognese I use tins of tomatoes and a squirt of tomato puree, she loves it. We have stir fry and she eats that as it is, or poached egg. I make our own pizza and she eats that too. But it is easier for me to do these things because I only work 2 days a week, 2 x 4 hour shifts.

As for the Quorn, I'm a veggie so I eat alot of that but I'm sure it's fine for babies..isn't it mainly mushroom protein?

I don't get worried if she doesn't eat much lunch/dinner, her milk is enough to fill her up. TBH she prefers milk to food anyway.

 

[heles7]

my HV was saying something about the general advice regarding quorn is that its not recommended as it doesn't provide much in the way of nutrition for them - no idea what the truth n science behind that is cos its obviously nutritious enough for big people; in short there is no harm in giving it to babies i think.

im with you on sauces; i really do depend on ready made stuff for those nights when i cant be bothered. generally i try and make enough of the baby friendly stuff for the freezer so that james can have that when im having something from a packet or jar.

I did a curry using a paste for me on night and did put a very small amount in james's portion and bulked it out with extra tinned tomatoes and that was a huge hit!

 

[beanie]

I guess I have a bit of a head start as all our meals have to be suitable for Seren too so it was really easy just adding a bit more for Cally. Before I had Seren we ate a lot of ready made sauces but because she ate what we did from an early age I just bought a really cheap cook book and made up the rest. For bolognese sauces I just use a little bit of stock, garlic, tins tomatoes, tomato puree and herbs to flavour, for chilli just like above but add a teaspoon of ground cumin and paprika to the fried mince and onions. I have found an easy curry recipe, but tend to take the girl'sportion out before adding lots of chilli (though the one time I did accidently put a bit too much in before I removed theirs and both girls loved it). I am not a massive salt fan so its been really easy to cut that out.

If Cally refuses anyhting then she goes without as at her age food is about exploring and tasting, her calories come from her milk.

 

[loz]

I did give Emms tomatoes and mince once but she spewed it up straight away!

I think I will have to try and make some stuff up, I think I dont have much confidence and get really worried about Emma's eating as she is quite small and I just want her to eat as much as possible. I get so tired and run out of time in the evenings before she gets wingy and doesnt want to eat!!

 

[Babylicious]

I would avoid giving quorn for now, it's just protein and doesn't contain everything that baby needs. I was going to try harrison on it a few months back but was told not to give it by a few sources!