Healthy family meal ideas suitable for babies?

[BosomsByTheSea]

Hello lovely ladies. Our DTs are about to start BLW and we are getting prepared. I know they will start off with fruit and veg etc, but I was hoping you would share yur brilliant healthy family meals that we can all eat together. DH and I would like to make a change to more healthy eating too.

We currently have quite a lot of pasta and homemade tomato sauce, pizza about once per week, omelette, risotto and so on - but most have salt or stock in the recipe. We also eat too much processed stuff like oven chips.

What tasty, healthy family meals do you all enjoy?
Many thanks in advance.

fish pie
cottage pie
soups
fish or meat with pasta, rice or couscous
casseroles

pretty much anything that can be mashed up for your babies to manage and the more wide a variety of taste the more they will enjoy the whole family meal experience and once they are able to eat more easily they will enjoy slices of frittata, putting together their own wraps with fillings and putting on their own pizza toppings!

Add lots of veg to your pasta sauces and try things like casseroles, stews, curries and for a change from pasta serve with rice, couscous, potatoes, etc

fish pie and shepherd's pie are great, and a nicer topping than mashed potato is mashed potato and sweet potato or swede.

Home made meatballs served with tomato sauce and pasta are good, or home made burgers/meatballs served in pitta bread or other bread with lots of salad.

Things like lentils and chickpeas and other pulses are great for stews and casseroles.

No extra idea particularly cause you eat the kind of stuff we do but instead of oven chips you can just bake potato wedges, tossed in a bit of oil. You can also just not add salt or use salt free stock cubes (Boots do a baby one) to the recipes you do already.

Thanks

Casseroles will definitely be on the menu! Lovely tender meat and veg. i would normally use some Buillon powder though - any tips for increasing taste without salt - or do we just need to re-educate our palate?

Just cut out the salt from your cooking. I don't add salt to anything I cook now. Sometimes I'll add it at the table if I think it needs it, and I do still sprinkle it on my chips but you get used to it very quickly. You can get very low salt stock cubes (Kallo make them) or you could make your own stock...

Instead of oven chips, you could try sweet potato wedges. Just cut a sweet potato into wedges, toss in some veg oil and cook for about 40 mins. DS used to love these when he was smaller.

I never add salt to anything and my casseroles are popular!
Use a dollop of Marmite in there for added flavour (it won't taste of marmite so any marmite haters in your family won't notice)

aaah - the pink one - salt-free stock cubes sound useful - are they any good?

OMDB I am veggie but the boys aren't - homemade meatballs and burgers sound great - it's hard to think of things like that when we've never made them before! Thank you for your ideas.

Any cookbooks you'd recommend?

Annabel Karmel's baby and toddler book is packed full of ideas and even now my dcs are older I still make some of the recipes from it.

Otherwise just use any cookbook just making sure that you don't add salt and that any ingredient is going to be suitable for mashing up for eating with few or no teeth

Baby and Child Vegetarian Recipes by Carol Timperley has some good recipes for the whole family.

We were similarly unhealthy before we had DS1 but I think we've all benefitted by eating together. I did do BLW with DS1 and did do some Annabel Karmel stuff but with DS2 was braver and now don't see the need to cook "child-friendly" food as I think babies are much more adventurous than we give them credit for. DS2 has eaten fairly hot curries since he was about 8 months, in fact, like me, he tends to prefer spicy stuff to bland food.

I'm guessing finger food will be good if you've got twins. DS2 loves home-made chicken and fish goujons. If you're holding off weaning until after 6 months then you can plough straight in to meat etc. For quick lunches you can cut jacket potatoes into wedges. Eggy bread is great too and I also put slices of cheddar on to a slice of bread and blast it in the microwave until it's melted. The bread goes soggy but when you haven't got (m)any teeth that's an advantage...

As far as books to inspire you go ths is good.

Also, don't get stressed if they're not too keen to start, or if more goes on the floor than in them. DS2 didn't eat anything until he was almost 8 months but 3 months later is keen to try everything.

displayuntilbestbefore - doesn't Marmite have quite a lot of salt in it though?

marmite is full of salt obviously.

What I would do is just add salt to my food on the table or add salt (and chillies in curry and chillie con carne) after I have taken enough out for the baby to eat.

I prefer looking for recipes online rather than buy cookbooks, and just adapt them as necessary and leave out salt etc.

REmember though healthy meals for adults arent'a always healthy for babies, so beware of high fibre 'healthy meals' as babies should not have high fibre diets at all. It robs their bodies of vital nutrients and they cannot deal with all that roughage ~ so things like white pasta and white rice are vital, don't start substituting with wholemeal pasta or brown rice for babies and toddlers, only for adults.

Chicken pie made like fish pie is also very lovely and popular with babies, especially with nutmeg in the white sauce and swede mashed into the [potato. Don;t be scared of adding herbs and spices either, and things like garlic and onions of course babies can have.

Thank you all very much - lots of good ideas here. I will go and have a look at those books

Marmite is perfectly fine for children to eat - I'm not suggesting OP puts lashings of it in, just a teaspoon in a large casserole.
I wouldn't add any table salt to any cooking or food at the table. Not a good idea to get children used to adding salt IMO.
There's no need for salt in day-to-day cooking.

yeah but salt makes food taste better!

Marmite's actually not recommended for children under one because of the high salt content. Obviously 1 tsp in a family-size stew isn't a huge amount but it is still salt.

Well, OP is hardly likely to start BLW with the casserole is she
rofl at that