To think that ‘just feed them what you eat’ when weaning is much harder than it sounds unless you already make everything from scratch?

[AliceinSlumberland]

I’ve got a 6 month old and we’re doing a bit of a mixed BLW/mushed up approach which is working for us, but I’m struggling with the ‘just feed them what you eat’ advice. I hate cooking, I should start by saying, so I have become a bit more reliant on easy to make meals, especially after a long day at work, but these just aren’t comparable with BLW. For example, I make a hotpot every so often but I use one of the packet mixes and I just feel overwhelmed about how to make it without that? Same with sausage casserole - but the baby can’t have these things as the packets have too much salt for him.

Sometimes I’ll make a pasta bake with a jar, and I do know how to make the sauce myself but it takes a lot longer. I feel like I’m having to rejig our entire menu and find new meals to have, so it’s not anywhere near as simple as ‘just feed them what you eat’ unless you’re already making everything from scratch?

Any simple hotpot recipes with less salt appreciated!

I suppose I took a start as I mean to go on stance when weaning. I didn’t want to be forever cooking different meals for the children so I learnt how to cook. I don’t enjoy it, but I’m comfortable with what I feed them.

We to do have the occasional jar etc when needed, maybe on the odd occasion baby could have a fish finger etc, not ideal but not going to cause harm occasionally.

Could you use a meal service like Gousto to get going? Then when you find what you like you can order the ingredients.

It's also worth looking on the back of packet mixes to see what's in them. Then checking a decent website for an easy version.

Sausages, tinned tomatoes, a tin of butter beans would get you started for sausage casserole + maybe carrot, oregano, thyme and a low salt stock cube.

What are you going to do once your baby is out of jars /purées stage and needs full meals?

‘Just feed them what you eat’ assumes that the parent must be eating a wide variety of fresh healthy food everyday at one of the most exhausting times of their lives.

I’d be looking to cook from scratch to benefit your own health, and reduce ultra processed ingredients. Benefit is then you can share with baby. You really don’t need those sachets to cook, I’ve never bought one. Can you make a big batch of tomato sauce and freeze? If you’re making a hot pot, I don’t think it’s the sachet that saves time. Try https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/collection/hotpot-recipes

You could give them the veg and potatoes that goes with these meals as a start. I'd probably give a little of the "stew/meat" too. As long as not too much.

There are some really good BLW recipes on the NHS website. We all eat a lot of those together! (But yes, I agree with you. It has forced us to eat well too.)

If you're doing mush, it's not BLW. It's adding finger foods.

BLW is just that - NO mush, just normal regular adult food. Doesn't have to be full meals. Just whole fruit/veg/cheese etc.

What Mummy Makes is your friend here. Cookbook of pretty easy stuff that that whole family can eat. We eat a lot of pasta these days. We have either - tomato, onion, garlic, carrot cooked down and blended (I make tons of this at a time and freeze most of it). Or soft cheese thinned out with pasta water some type kind of green veg chucked under. Or hulk Mac and cheese which is a what mummy makes recipe of frozen spinach microwaved in milk and then thickened into a cheese sauce. Surprisingly nice. But also, baked potatoes are good. Eggs on toast is great. In the early days cutting up fruit and/or veg will give them chance to try something for very little effort on your part.

There are a lot of flaws with blw and it doesn't work for everyone.
Having said that one easy I reduced salt when cooking was too as the salty element towards the end of cooking. So for something like a packet mix, you could add half the packet mix at the beginning and then later remove baby portions and add in the rest of packet mix towards the end of cooking. Alternative you can make as normal but then dilute theirs down with some milk or similar.

We didn’t always eat at the same time, so I used jars a lot.

I'm amazed at the anti salt attitude re babies in the British isles.
But I think it might be a cultural difference...
I'm known by my partner/ex/ friends here for liking my food very salty. What I would call normal coming from abroad.
Today I'm in my home country and I found the food in restaurants extremely salty. So even my taste has at least partially adapted to the British Isles way

What are the flaws?

Totally agree with this!

Completely agree OP. That advice only works if you’re eating reasonably healthy meals all the time. I certainly wasn’t at that stage. Instead I just batch cooked baby friendly (i.e nutritious, no salt) meals and froze them, it made life a lot easier!

We did a combination of eat what we eat plus the odd pouch or something from the freezer if unsuitable.
We do cook about half our meals from scratch and it really doesn't mean much more effort and tastes much better. You can do your own pasta sauce in 5 mins chopping, 5 mins frying and 20mins simmering, it takes ten mins to boil the pasta so it's not much extra really. Spag bol we don't use a packet just garlic onions stock cube etc. Frying the beef thoroughly and not overdoing the garlic is the key to good flavour.
Then you can do roast chicken and potatoes and veg, freeze some leftover chicken in little pots.
Fried salmon or sea bass fillet is quick and easy, with rice and veg.
Soup really easy just fry some onion garlic veg, add stock, ready in 30 mins
Baked potato with cheese
The rest of our meals are stuff like fish and chips, pizza, freezer junk, ready meal lasagne, I think those things are ok now and again once the baby is a bit older, it's really only up to 18 months ish that you need to worry about normal levels of salt, I'm more concerned about the amount of highly processed food but the children prefer plain food anyway - they never eat much pizza or ready meal.

Sorry I just can't really comprehend the problem. What people call " cooking from scratch" I would just call " cooking"..you need to learn! You shouldn't be eating food every day that you can't feed to your baby! Maybe my culture is not very British, but honestly, it's just as easy to make quick, nice food without resorting to packets. So, things I am never without, to add flavour to food: lemon juice, garlic, fresh herbs, olive oil, butter, vegetables etc. You will feel better for eating fresh food, and it doesn't have to be complicated.

We took as the chance to eat better ourselves. I HATE cooking but I managed to learn a few decent things. Steaming veg is super easy and in the right shape is great for introducing different textures. Pasta sauce with hidden veg we still do now (youngest 10) as it's great to freeze for quick dinners.

I did what @unlikelychump says at the beginning. I just took elements of the meal I made and didn't include a sauce. Sometimes I'd mush up some advocado or steam some extra veg on the side if needed.

There are also some really simple recipes out there to move on to, such as BBC Food's Easy Spanish Chicken recipe. I quite like doing things like chicken and pasta in a sauce that consists of chopped tomatoes, various herbs and topped with cheese. I'll generally add a bit of salt and some chilli flakes after I've taken my 2 year old's portion outand left it to cool.

Even things like a spag bol can be done without a packet/jar without being any more complicated. Just use chopped tomatoes and herbs for the sauce. If you really miss the sachets, then you could always add a sachet after removing your DC's portion again.

Lots of mum guilt surrounding this and I can totally relate. Busy lives, working, kids, dog walking, general life stuff and not everyone has the time to cook organic, uber healthy meals and snacks from scratch. I admit to using and having used lots of jars and baby ready meals (a lot of the ready made stuff is probably healthier than what I cook on a daily basis anyway!) It’s quick and easy when I’m working a long late day, then I can cook a later meal for the older DD and us. Not always, when I’m off work I try and incorporate the little one in our meals which I make from scratch, but as a rule we eat later than she has to and it’s just not doable.

I do 2 meals a day currently with my 7 month old. For lunch I'll give her some jar/pouch thing because she can't have half of my lunch time chocolate bar just yet.

For dinner she has what we have. If it's something not suitable for her, I've pre-made and frozen a few meals that she can have. If it's suitable but needs less salt for example, I'll use a little saucepan to cook hers in or separate her portion before adding salt/honey etc.

Precisely why I’ve used Ella’s kitchen pouches. I cook fresh everyday for me and DH, but it is not suitable for babies and it is not organic.

Ella’s pouches have 10+ ingredients in each one, all organic, no rice flour, no oil, no salt, no added sugar. I worked out how much it would cost me to make some of the Ella’s meals I buy, it would be well over £5 per portion as it’s all organic, and there are loads of good ingredients. My DD is 9mo and has 4-5 pouches a day plus milk.

Also, I want to expose DD to as many flavours, and different plants as possible because it is very good for tummies and gut bacteria to have a greater variety of plants. She still gets finger food too, and knows exactly what to do with it.

I’ve never related to anything more in my life lol. Working, caring for the baby and then cooking everything from scratch when I find cooking really difficult just feels overwhelming.

We’ve done Gusto before but they mostly include stock so would have the salt problem again. I can make a cottage pie and spag Bol from scratch thanks to gusto! Would I just get low salt oxo cubes, would they be okay then?

Glad it’s not just me @StBernie , I’ll get some batch cooking done.

This doesn’t need to be a discussion about blw/purées, as I said a mixed approach is working for us, whatever name you want to give it.

I actually have this book, I need to dig it out, I must admit that the prospect of cooking new recipes stresses me out a bit as it often goes wrong 😬 but I need to give it a go.

I do mostly cook from scratch, and don't much add salt to food, so from that perspective I could in theory have given DD what we ate. And I did, when it was convenient. But I think it makes things needlessly complicated. Babies that age don't actually need 'meals'. They have tiny tummies and they snack. I found it enormously helpful to think about it like this and just give tastes of things rather than trying to engineer a whole meal.

Make your hotpot however you make it, then do some steamed green beans on the side for you - there you go, baby can see if s/he likes green beans dipped in butter. Fine. You're making pasta and sauce? Keep some of the pasta separate and put some soft cheese on it as a sauce (various soft cheeses are low in salt). If you're making something like chicken stir-fry with a stir-in sauce, just fish out some cooked chicken before you add the sauce. Etc. They will only eat a few bites and at the moment (as I understand it) the important thing is introducing different tastes and textures so they can get to enjoy food.

I agree that later on you might find you want to cook differently anyway, but as a PP says, you probably don't have much spare energy now!