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

Literally the only things to remember are - don't add chillis or wine, and less salt.

Apart from that, I just mashed or snipped whatever we were having. I'd challenge anyone to come up with a meal that can't be snipped or mashed for a weaning baby. If it's too dry, add a bit of milk or water. If it's too lumpy, mash it more!

Yoghurt, ready brek weekend and mine loved a toasted tea cake or hot cross bun!
Lunch was always a selection of food pasta grapes olives cooked and raw carrots cubes of cheese cucumber etc( the dog ate most of it)
Dinner was always what we were having without salt. But also used baby organic jars of food and breastfed.

And this is part of the problem! To say "give the baby some leftovers" implies, that there is food to begin with!

It's not unusual for parents, mums really, to be surviving on caffeine, sugar and super noodles (or something equally yum but non baby friendly) for dinner, if youre in this rut then it's not easy to suddenly change everything and cook yourself a hearty healthy dinner and have enough left for kids dinner the next day, everyday. Its changing how you do things and how you eat yourself which isn't just a wake up the next morning and start whipping up a lentil dahl and rice for you all

I used the purple Ella's Kitchen book and the What Mummy Makes book too, and I have ADHD, loathe cooking and found it all very overwhelming. I did use pouches for dinner maybe once or twice a week if we'd been out. But otherwise, those books were great and very simple to follow. The What Mummy Makes courgette sheetpan still gets made regularly seven years later!

You definitely don't need to cook three times a day, and what you do cook can be super simple. My formula for dinner at that age was something mushy (e.g. bolognese or lentil mush), a couple of fingers of toast, and some boiled veg as finger food. Pancakes featured heavily in our days as well, and plain yogurt. They don't need a full meal, just different tastes and textures and things to squash and chew on.

I have an eight month old. Both my husband and I work full time in shift patterns. I don't have time to breathe never mind whip up 3 home cooked meals a day.

Sometimes you need to outsource and that's ok.

Second Lune & Wild for hot foot - it costs about £40 for a month's dinners and the quality is excellent. It's a million times better than pouches and is batch cooked and frozen. All the ingredients are organic.

We use it for dinner, he loves them. Breakfast is Weetabix or porridge, lunch a sandwich and fruit if he's at home not at nursery.

He's thriving.

🙄🙄🙄 no they won’t.

If you’re struggling and need a break to gather your thoughts, why not. Fed is best and if this is the best option for you at the moment, go for it.

The advice about batch cooking and eating what you do is great, and sensible, but perhaps you’re not quite in the right place yet for that to work. And that’s ok, we all have our moments.

I don’t know that you have to spend that much. I’d probably keep it simple, do an online shop, whack a few different pouches and baby meals in and see what your DC likes and doesn’t. Take the pressure off for a bit. Breakfast is the easiest, just give them some porridge, toast fingers or mashed banana to play with. Pouches or pre-made meals for the others for a week or two won’t cause any harm at all.

If it’s greasy and burned you’re buying the wrong ones
its a normal roast chicken! Take the skin off and shred it and you’ve got lots of ready booked meat

I never cook. My baby (same age) has yogurts for breakfast, then some pureed fruit (from a pouch), a baby biscuit for a snack, some cucumber slices for another snack, avocado slices for another snack, ready nade porridge or baby rice... Etc. She actually has a pretty balanced diet in terms of fruit/veg/carbs but I never cook, only chop or prepare food. My DH sometimes does some cooking for her.

What are you cooking?

Absolutely no way I’d pay that for any child, let alone an eight month old.

what is it specifically you’re struggling with and maybe we can come up with some ideas to help?

Babies don’t need this many snacks or ready made porridge or baby rice 🤯

Thank you - yes this is totally me, if I was eating well I’d definitely make it adaptable for her but I’m just not. If I could easily start cooking healthily then I’d prioritise doing it for her first anyway, and I can’t even manage that!

Between not getting enough sleep, fitting in naps, housework (though that’s not really happening) I’m completely overwhelmed.

Also a perfectionist and read all the stuff from nutritionists saying they just have X amount of iron each meal and I feel like an awful mother!

Why are you cooking separate meals for your baby? Our babies are pretty much what we are. Puréed/mashed etc, but we didn’t cook them special food.

Eat when your baby eats, give them what you’re eating, stick them in the highchair with some utensils while you prep (quick) food.

Yes please!

She doesn't have all that in one day! Just examples of what she generally eats. Requires very little cooking, less than my toddlers meals

@MxCactus why wouldn’t you just give her same as your toddler?

She chokes on toddlers food - not ready for a lot of it yet. But eventually they'll have the same

I know I know, it’s ridiculous. I’m just so overwhelmed.

I think with the ADHD I generally struggle with doing different things at once so if I’m looking after her I find it very difficult to sort her food, and mine, whilst also worrying about her nap time and anything else we’ve got to get done in day.

We do batch cook when we can though we don’t really have that much freezer space.

She’s also not really taken to solids and she barely eats any of it so it’s so demoralising when I do cook.

she has some more suspected allergies so we’re slowly working through them - not introduced wheat, fish and only slowly doing dairy now so that’s quite limiting as well

You could get a small freezer for under £100?

Yes if you are overwhelmed and have the cash the meals looks good quality and are a solution for now.

But if you want your child to eat well long term (and you sound like this is important to you) you’ll also need to change how you feed yourself and how you organise and prepare meals.

i think the problem with all the baby recipe books ect is that they make it seem really complicated and work heavy to feed a baby. You just need to get some simple meals together.

How about using the bought baby food to take the pressure off and then starting with two nights a week, start cooking meals that all of you can eat. What mummy makes is a good cookbook for this.

I’ve got a 13 mo. That’s an insane sum of money. I wouldn’t pay it if I’d won the Euromillions because it just isn’t value. They lash loads of it on the floor at 8 months.

We are not super parents, by any means, and one of us has ADHD, but between oats, fruit, toast, yoghurt, a bit of cheese and just desalinating our own meals and sharing a small portion, we think she’s eating pretty well.

I picked up an under counter freezer on Marketplace for £15 to save food for her. It’s not the prettiest thing but while we need it, we need it.

You don’t need to be cooking her gourmet meals. Is she happy in a high chair, bouncer, or sling, while you spend 10 mins pulling something together? Tonnes of quick recipe ideas on Instagram, but equally simple food is great. Honestly listen to others who say who her what you have, will get you eating better and healthier at the same time if you take the time to make something you know she will have. Don’t worry about the waste, it’s part and parcel at this age. Just think about exposing them to different textures and tastes while feeding yourself good nutritious food. See prepping and eating as an activity and work it into your schedule of naps. Do the clearing up while she’s still in the high chair so you can relax when she’s then asleep! Nursery rhymes on in the background for entertainment. Honestly you just need to take the pressure off yourself and try to enjoy it. Tiny Tums is a good app / Instagram account and I loved the what mummy makes books, although second time around found I didn’t have enough time for the recipes and was happier just giving baby bits of what we were having. Loved them first time around though.

Oh and get an air fryer if you can afford one, not so much for the baby years but brilliant when you have very hangry toddlers.

To be fair to that poster I never buy the chicken of the hot counter but if I did I'd remove the skin.
And thats exactly how I'd give it to a baby skin off.

Genuis idea