Weaning recipes for a non cook

Goods

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Hi all.

I'm currently weanin my son, so far all the things I've given him a pretty basic, porridge, puréed apple, mashed banana, butternut squash. The thing is I'm not a cook. The food I cook for DH are things like stir fry with shop bought sauce, fajitas with shop bought spice mix. The only thing I make from scratch are Irish stew, spag Bol and scotch broth soup, which due to the stock aren't suitable for babies.

I've got an Annabelle Karmel book and have picked out a few recipes I'm going to try but I'd like to not have to cook separate meals. Can anyone suggest a few straight forward meals that would be suitable for DS too?

Thanks in advance.
 
Pretty much anything you make yourself, you can offer to your LO. Just leave out the salt and sugar. For a baby, of course, you wouldn't want to use the store-bought sauces or spice packets, but it's easy to make yourself.

For example, the fajita spice mix is mostly just cumin, coriander, garlic, chilli powder (might want to leave that out though) and paprika, plus a load of salt. Just buy your own jars of spices and mix it up yourself to taste (you'll know what tastes right) and leave out the salt until you dish out a bit for your LO, then add salt for yourselves. Sometimes when I do fajitas and want to make them extra spicy, I also just make my daughter some cheesy tortilla rolls instead, basically, flour tortilla, topped with shredded cheese, and microwaved for 20 seconds. Then I roll it up and she can dip it in yogurt or guacamole, which makes for great finger food.

For stir fry, you can stir fry everything without the sauce until it's cooked, take some out for your LO, then add the sauce at the end and heat through.

I've always used jarred pasta sauces from 6 months, but I just used less for my daughter. Often at first, it made it too slippery to pick up anyway, so she often preferred it plain until she got better at picking it up. We also often do just pasta with butter, sometimes garlic, topped with cheese, sometimes we add in peas, which is easy and doesn't have any added salt or sugar.

A roast dinner is good - roast meat (beef, lamb, chicken) with mash or roast potatoes and steamed vegetables is pretty basic and doesn't need any added salt, except maybe on the meat, but you can leave it off if you want.

You can also make all the things you say you already make - Irish stew, spaghetti bol, scotch broth with baby stock cubes (you should find them in the baby food section of the store), which have vegetables and herbs, but no salt. You can also make your own vegetable stock, which you could freeze, which would be fine to use. That might be a bit of a pain though and I could never be bothered! I always used the stock powder (rather than the cubes) and just added less. If I wanted to add more for us, I took some out for my daughter and then re-seasoned for our tastes and cooked longer.

If you are looking for a cookbook, I'm a big fan of the River Cottage Baby and Toddler Cookbook. The recipes are all appropriate for the whole family (though there are some puree ones at the front as well), and they tell you how to adjust the recipe for small babies. You can eat it yourself, offer to your LO as finger food or mash/puree. My daughter is 2 and we still make something from there probably once a week.
 
Thank you for such a great reply (and apologies for the delay in responding). I bought that River Cottage book and there are loads of recipes I am definitely going to try. I'd def recommend it to anyone struggling like me.

And I also got the Baby Stock cubes, couldn't find the specific ones I needed but got Kallo which I note a few people had mentioned. I didn't notice any difference in taste.

Thanks
 
You can also get low salt stock. It's still quite salty for babies but I just used half the amount I would normally and spend through a large dish it is very little salt.
 
I like to do plain steamed carrots. Isabelle is 7 months and she loves pinto beans with cheese, ravioli, avocado. grilled chicken with lime juice etc. If you just cut some veg into sticks you cook it up with a little oil in a pan, or steam then do the same with a slice of chicken or beef. Try wrapping root vegetables in foil and grilling or roasting them. For myself I do beets, potato, sweet potato/yams rubbed with olive oil and salt. For her, I do the same minus the salt, or peeled afterwards. Then just pop on the grill or in a 400 degree (F) oven for 45 minutes.

You could try omelette with cheese/veg too. I had to stop that though because my daughter broke out in hives from the egg. Also, peanut butter on toast sticks she loooves.
 

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