Has anyone tried the £10.99 a day baby food?

[Northstar26]

Has anyone tried the V&Me baby food? It’s £10.99 a day which is so much but I’m absolutely at the end of my tether trying to cook 3 meals a day for my 8mo. The cooking, the clean up takes forever and it feels like I’m wasting so much time I could be spending properly with her.

she’s also mildly allergic to egg.

I could afford it every now and again if it’s actually good? I have ADHD so does make all the meal planning, shopping and cooking a million times harder, I feel like I’m drowning and it’s making my days quite miserable which is gutting as my DD is so lovely and I generally enjoy our days (before/outside of feeding!)

www.vandme.co.uk

Thanks

If you have the money go for it!!

At 8 months, your baby can have pretty much what you’re having! Go easy on the salt and sugar. We were also advised against honey (botulism) and nuts (allergies) when the dc (now teens) were babies. There’s no way I’d be spending that much on baby food!

I’d ideally hope so but im finding it hard enough to feed myself to be honest so id rather she ate a lot better than me! She’d be having a snack bar, a Tesco sandwich etc.

I wouldn't be spending that on baby food either.
My oldest I did sometimes use jars or pouches. Youngest wouldn't touch baby food, so very much ate what we did.

Make use of what’s already in the supermarket and done for you
frozen veg
roasted Mediterranean veg
chicken off the hot counter
frozen mash
ready sliced cheese
salad
stir fry
packs of ready cooked grains

you could just do chicken off the hot counter with some roasted veg and grains/cous cous

There's no need to cook 3x a day.
Nothing wrong with weetabix or porridge and feuit for breakfast or even toast and fruit.

Lunch can be a cold lunch sandwich / pitta etc . Cucumber sticks or leftover pasta from day before.

Evening cooked meal ? With leftovers for lunch the next day.

At 8m most nutrition is still from their milk.

I wouldn't spend that a day on baby food for the majority to be spat out or dropped on the floor.

Could you cook in batches and freeze it/keep in fridge for next day? That’s a lot for baby food and you could get a lot cheaper in the supermarket, a lot of food doesn’t take too much effort e.g. mashed banana, scrambled eggs , beans, toast, roast a chicken and yiu can eat that for a few days with rice, potatoes, couscous, pasta is quick and easy?

£10.99?? That's a lot.

If you can batch cook a few things, and freeze portions, you'd save a lot.

Just give the baby small amounts of what you're having, mashed up with a fork or cut into stick shapes.

Both of mine had about five mouthfuls a day of food at that age. That's about £2 per mouthful if you go with this deal!!

Cook one good meal and both eat well!

Can I DM you? I'm a v experienced nanny who specialises in weaning and who also has ADHD so do genuinely understand the struggle x

(If you don't want advice (Which is completely fine!) then I have 2 families who have used them, one absolutely loves them, one likes them but didn't love the variety, felt it was a little same same)

If organising is the issue, have you tried using an AI like ChatGPT to come up with an easy weekly plan that minimises prep and waste? It can be a very handy tool for this sort of thing, and you can keep tweaking the response until you’re happy with it.

As others have said you really don’t need to cook 3 times a day. Breakfast and lunch should be quick and simple, and evening meals can be batched in advance or leftovers from the day before. Cooking a bit of pasta or rice, steaming some veg and cooking some kind of protein shouldn’t take ages or be too complicated.

greasy burnt chicken off the hot counter for an 8mo? I grant you they’d probably scoff it down the be sick after 😳

I'd spend one weekend batch cooking for the month. Loads and loads of little pots in the freezer.

I’m past that stage but it looks expensive, I like my family to eat together and the same as much as possible and I avoid UPF so it would have been a no for me.

£77 a week for baby food???!!!! For an eight month old? That is sheer madness. How can it possibly be taking so much time and energy to feed an 8 month old? Can't they just eat what you eat at that age or have all the 'rules' changed?

I absolutely see why you are considering these meals. I would make a terrible house wife and also suspect I have ADHD, but I did manage to get into a groove with feeding my second child, and he's now a really good eater. Here's what worked for us...

I had the Ella's Kitchen First Foods Cook Book (the purple one) and a couple of times each week I would make a couple of the recipes and would freeze them in little Tupperware boxes that were just the right size for a baby portion. I'd get 4-5 meals out of each recipe, and since breakfast was normally porridge, fruit, yogurt etc if I managed to cook two recipes at once that would cover lunch and dinner over 4-5 days. The recipes are all really straightforward and quick so it was really easy to do. Honestly I think it was the most domesticated I'll ever be in my life. With my first I relied on BLW style finger foods with some pouches, and he turned out a really fussy eater. I think the way I approached things with DC2 introduced him to more flavours earlier which has helped him have a more diverse diet as he's grown up. I would really recommend that book.

8 mo doesnt need 3 meals a day yet. Cook 1 main meal for you all; then just do something easy for breakfast like overnight oats. Today my toddler has porridge (made it for both me and her), lunch was Heinz spag hoops and tinned sweetcorn, then a Satay noodle stir fry. All balanced and healthy enough

This advice always made me laugh.

During maternity leave I existed on cereal, Starbucks and McDonalds drive through, and cake.

I had/have a velcro baby who only contact napped and co-slept, I couldn’t just pop off to the kitchen to whizz up a healthy nutritious meal! 🥴

I know it's not fashionable but I used to use the Hipp ready meals when I couldn't get myself organised to do proper food.

I don't see the point on paying loads out for fancy baby food - I bet it's just as junky as the cheaper stuff.

I can recommend Lune & Wild to supplement home made food. It’s been a life saver with our 7mo sorting family meals with a fussy 5 yr old. The baby often has decent L&W for lunch and then a version of family tea later (which she mostly doesn’t know really what to do with as it’s mainly finger food so she doesn’t feel left out….)

But yes, it’s best to try and get into the habit of making leftovers which can be made into baby food, or doing a meal for which adult seasoning can be added at the table.

I can see why you'd be overwhelmed by recipes and batch cooking, I am too sometimes (I like batch cooking but not with a baby around).

But you're overthinking it. Whatever you eat, just add a dash of milk, mash mash with a fork, done. Or use scissors to slice it into tiny pieces.

Spaghetti bolognese? Keep some spaghetti overcooking so it's softer than everyone else's, snip it into tiny pieces, add the bolognese.

Sausage and mash? Use scissors to snip the sausage into tiny pieces or long fingers. Mash is already mashed. Mash peas with a fork.

You're having a sandwich? Do another one for the baby, cut it into afternoon-tea shaped fingers.

Some foods are already perfect, like porridge, fried rice, rice pudding, toast with anything spread on it, avocado, banana.

It takes seconds to snip or mash it, because the baby's portion is so small anyway. Like three spoonfuls per meal.

What Mummy Makes weaning book you all eat the same! Baby used to have what was left from dinner as lunch the next day!!

Get some reasonable bread and put in the freezer. Mine will eat yoghurt, mascarpone, mayonaise, banana, frozen avocado, beans, nut butter, hummus, olive oil, scrambled egg and pepper spread on toast. It's 2 easy meals a day and he'll normally eat at least one of that combo, or at least suck the spread off then drop sticky viewed bread in the floor!

A more cost effective option would be the freezer.blocks from the company stocked - they do a good range of child friendly, healthy recipes and you can defrost one block at a time