Need help & inspiration... meals for a 2.5 yr old and a 6mth baby...

[TheBlonde]

I have given up cooking for my toddler as he generally refused to eat any of it

However I will soon be starting to give the baby food so it seems like a good idea to try cooking for him again

I have one of those AK books but no clue what to try first

Can anyone help me?

I am having some success with casserole type dishes for ds (16motnhs) and myself and dh. The beef and vegetable one in AK's toddler section would work pureed down for the little one and is really tender for your toddler. Obviously I expect you'll start with carrot etc rather than straight onto the beef for baby's first meal I've found ds will eat anything that is really saucey but turns his nose up at drier stodgier dishes.

ooh he loved the AK mulligatawny chicken this week, we had it too, quite nice

i started following the recipies from AK book (after a very kind MNetter gave me the book) They were all great, however i have found that ds favorite food is any meat cooked in a casserole with as many veggies as possible! No need for blending because the veggies tend to 'fall' anyway. (but that may just be my cooking)

I think that's what ds likes about casseroles too. I find it so much easier to cook something for our dinner and then serve it to ds the next day rather than sweating to make his lunch while he's kicking around.

Casseroles sound good, I shall dig out the book

Soup!

Not sure about soup - how bad is the mess factor?

I used to make the soup with less stock or milk than in the recipe so you basically get a puree, reserve a bit for baby then add extra liquid for toddler and adults.
Still pretty messy for toddler but it's fun dipping the bread in and a good way to get them to eat veggies they wouldn't otherwise eat.

bumping for any more ideas

I tended to do tomatoey pasta sauce which baby can manage (mine like it really garlicky) and add big fat macaroni for the toddler she loves sticking her fingers in the tubes and eating it (messy, but it disappears!!) Anything that we were eating was always a hit too.

I have a "recipe" that looks disgusting but always goes down a treat with both ds1 and ds2: mash 1 avocado and 1 banana, serve with French toast fingers for the protein or just toast if lazy...

How are you planning to feed the baby? Mashed/pureed or BLW? Just as there are lots of recipes on the BLW blog, but I'm not sure how most of them would work if you're going down the mash/puree route.

Pasta always went down well with mine. He used to(and still does at 2.2) love tuna and sweetcorn pasta in a cheesy sauce. Another tuna pasta recipe with spinach, onions, red peppers (they're sweeter) and mushrooms cooked in tin of tomatoes and blended! It can be a bit messy though but as long as he was eating, I didn't really mind picking pasta off the ceiling

Good luck!