REALLY need some inspiration please..... Meals for a 10 month old

[Nip]

I really really need some help with ideas of what to feed my DS, he is 10.5 months. I came from a family where meals came from the freezer and straight into the microwave! I also have no-one close to me with experience of small babies.

EVERY day he has weetabix and a banana for breakfast

For lunch he has pasta (every day mon-fri) because he's at nursery, at the weekend he has fish fingers and peas. Followed by a yoghurt or fruit pot, grapes or raisins

For tea - variety isnt a problem, he has cheesy veg, chicken w/ sweet potato, tuna pasta bake, etc etc. Followed by a yoghurt or fruit pot, grapes or raisins

At about 5 he is hungry so he may have a banana, a baby biscuit/bread stick thing, or some toast

But this is it - the same thing, day in day out - i feel he needs more variety - but i dont know what to give him.
I need some ideas of what to give him, that are suitbale for his age, relatively easy to cook and MUST be suitable for freezing so that i can send him to nursery with it.

What do you give your 10mo DC?

PLEASE PLEASE HELP ME.

what do you and DH eat? Bet you don't have fishfingers for lunch every weekend.
At 10mo he can have most things that you're having so long as they're not too salty.

If i'm honest - crap! Or nothing, we pick and eat as we go along - i know we should eat better - but we arent like that - i'm trying though!
Hence why i want my DS to eat well - i spend a lot of time making nice food for him, so he wont be like me.

Sandwiches, salad, cheese, meats, any veg.

I tend to feed mine what we eat but as you said that is a problem.

My kids love boiled eggs and soldiers. Scrambled egg and beans on toast (very quick!!) Meat veg and mashed potatoes.

rice (very messy!)

Omelete.

Shepards pie (with hidden veg in it)

Right, lets start with breakfast

Eggy bread (lightly whip up egg with splash of milk, dip half slice of bread - staler the better! - fry in butter) When you feel fancy, add mashed banana

Porridge - really quick & easy in the microwave - again you can add fruit

Fruit/fruit salad/yoghurt & toast

We have cooked breakie occassionally at weekend too!

casseroles, easy to make, freeze well, nutritious tasty etc...

sausage, onion and beans (baked or flageolet type)

beef and veg
chicken and veg
pork and veg...etc etc

you can vary the meat/veg types to suit taste, whats in fridge.

My basic recipe is coat the meat in plain flour, fry, add veg, aprox 1 pint stock (more if you think) then cook in oven for aprox 1.5-2 hrs or better still put in a slow cooker.

Fish pie also v. popular with my DS

Sandwiches - he was eating these for lunch - but we had to stop as he took to throwing them and subseqently not eating them!

Not tried him with beans yet - perhaps i'll give it a go - and then nursery can give him that.

Omlettes - Can you reheat them?

Thehairybabiesmum - you say... beef and veg
chicken and veg
pork and veg...etc etc
How do you mean? As in a joint of meat?

Not wanting to be your mum but if you and your dh want to start eating well, this would be a great opportunity.

And for recipe ideas, I borrow books from my library and choose things I can make a large batch of, freeze a chunk of it in various sizes of yoghurt pots, larger tubs that had soup or ice cream etc, then you can defrost enough for just your ds, or all of you, or you and your dh. best of luck Nip, it's great that you care enough to want to do this for your son

For the dds including dd3 (10 months) I have just made huge vats of:

minced beef and borlotti beans with pasta
chicken and veg stew with some mild spices to serve with couscous
bolognaise
chicken patties (minced chicken mixed with the inside of sausages)
sheperds pie

I freeze all this and do loads of little tubs for dd3 to take to nursery

I do LOTS of casseroles too - make a big lot & freeze

Coucous is the new pasta in this house - even quicker than pasta!! lightly fry some veg ( &little bits of meat of you want), add couscous, then boiling water. Leave for a few mins & voila. Increadibly messy though (add some grated cheese at the end to get it to stick together)

Stirfries are quick, easy & healthy

Both of these are non-freezing options, though - but good for all of you at the weekend

In my food-nazi mode, I'd say that if you can, you should really try & get into a habit of eating healthily yourself if you want you lo to do so -it'll soon be difficult to give him something difficult to what you eat yourself - much easier to cook once...

Oh Believe me i really want to eat healthily but i'm having enough problems trying to sort out DS to worry about me right now.. i've survived this far.

Thank you for all your ideas, i think i've been 'barking up the wrong tree' as such. I thought that perhaps one warm meal was enough for the day, so for example - sarnies for lunch, and a cooked meal for tea... obviosuly i changed this for pasta at lunch.

So do you think it would be ok for DS to have say casserole for lunch and chicken cous cous for tea?

Fruit chicken curry is a fave here: fry bits of chicken (roll in seasoned flour first) until golden (quantity about 3 breasts but this is a very variable recipe, adapted from Annabel Karmel), put in casserole dish. Fry an onion for about 10 mins, stir in 2 tblsps (yes tablesoons!) MILD curry powder, about a third of a tube of tomato puree, cook another 2 mins, add 2 tbsp plain flour, cook another minute then about a half pint of chicken stock (I use a stock cube - you could look for a low salt one or see if it tastes OK with just water) add a chopped up apple or two, chopeed up tin of apricots in juice (drain the juice - I just don't like the ones in syrup) and a sliced carrot. Oven on low ish heat for an hour or two (told you it was a variable recipe! Low heat, long time = tenderest meat).

Try it, I know it looks vague but it's easy, tastes great, can be varied loads depending on what you have in, and you can smuggle in fruit and veggies e.g. add sultanas.

Oh and we have that with cous cous, SO quick and easy. I don't think hot or cold matters too much IMO, but nothing wrong with two hot meals, we vary between both of those. ds averse to new things, so I make sure that either lunhc or dinner is a deffo hit, and try to introduce something new as the other meal. Always gets rejected but I am starting to mind less, we just give him bread or toast to keep him going until next meal. Pudding is nrealy always fruit.

stewing steak for beef, cut into cubes.

chicken you could do with whole thighs or breasts but for ds meals i just cut into chunks. pork and lamb chunks too. I tend to do beef mostly as stewing steak is pretty cheap.

Good thread along similar lines currently going on here - someone suggested the Dinner Lady coookbook, which is full of easy recipes kids like (and which you and DH may find yourself eating too )

i eat better now since weaning ds...if i make a batch of casserole or suchlike for the freezer i will make enough for me and DHs tea that day too then freeze extra into ds sized portions and then i usually do a portion for the freezer for me so that i have a 'ready meal' to grab when it suits.

Also soups are easy for a lighter tea, i just give ds soup + brown bread and toast which he loves

why is his nursery only giving him pasta every day? do you provide this or do they cook for the children? is every child having pasta?

I provide it

Casserole & chicken couscous sounds lovely

I do personally tend to go for two cooked/semicooked meals a day, but kbnow lots of people who do one cooked meal and one sarnis & salad meal - nothing wrong with that if you lo will eat rather than throw his sarnis

Jacket spuds are another quick (ito prep) easy option.

PS You can't reheat omlette (but it is quite tasty cold)
Ito casserole...:

fry chopped meat in oil (about 1" cubes) on hob, once browned, add onion & fry for couple of mins; add spoonful or two of flour (just to make juices thinker), than add loads of cubed veg - root veg are esp good imho. add water (or lowsalt stock) to just cover everything. Bung in oven on low heat (say about 150. For beef I reckon on 3-4 hours for a bigish stew, for chicken, 1-1 1/2 hours. HTH!

Quinoa is really easy, cheap and incredibly nutricious (contains all essential amino acids).

Fry up some veg (eg pepper, courgette, mushrooms etc), add quinoa, tinned toms and low-salt stock and cook on hob for about 20 mins. Qunioa goes soft and is a small grain so easy for babies to eat.

My ds (9mo) could eat this all day long and I think it is yummy too! Also v easy to freeze/defrost.

mine tend to have one big hot meal and then one smaller meal

eg dd3 yesterday had beef and beans and pasta with veg for lunch, then fruit

then for tea she had a jacket potato (she eats the middle with her hands and sucks teh skin , some cut up bits of cheese, some cucumber and a yogurt

she tends to eat deconstructed versions of what the dds eat

gnocchi is a good alternative to pasta. it's in the supermarket next to fresh pasta. you can grate cheese on to it or stir pesto into it. very nice. only takes 3 minutes or so to cook. you can make your own, recipes on line. basically its mashed potato in little balls.

Thank you - i will try some of these recipes.

I'm sorry to ask these really stupid questions - but i'm really trying to do my best for my DS.

THANK YOU

Eek, made mistake in chicken curry recipe: you will need to add more stock/water to pot before it goes in oven, say half to a pint.

fried egg, some avocado, some hummus and pita, maybe a chopped salad with diced cucumbers and tomoatoes