Weaning - how did you mash food?

[CookieTramp]

My LO is just starting weaning now. I am so sleep deprived that I am using ready-made things, which I feel terrible about as I never did that with my first child.

To start addressing this, what did you mash food with? I want him to have what we have (rather than fill my tiny freezer with home-made purées, which I did last time).

Did yiu use a hand blender'? I have seen someone in a restaurant with a little masher with a handle that yiu turn but have never seen this in the shops.

Any ideas?

I didn't. Just gave DD what we had from the start. Started with slices of butternut squash.

I don't have the nerve for baby-led. Will start with mashed and move towards that later.

A fork. Just make sure everything is cooked enough to mash down with a fork and don't add sugar or salt. Hey presto instant baby food.

Mine was also happy to gnaw on things like roast carrot and parsnip, roast chicken, cucumber, breadsticks, toast, boiled eggs etc from 6 months.

Also some days I still just mash down a banana or avocado for my 9 month olds lunch.

Annabel Karmel makes a mouli, which mashes up food. It's good but quite messy, but better in the early stages when mashing with a fork doesn't get all the lumps out.

Just a fork will do. My two dc only had puree for the first few tastes, then I quickly introduced lumps and got them chewing. I was terrified of having fussy eaters complaining about bits in food like a friend of mine who pureed food for too long. It worked - mine were happy with lumpy food and also had herbs and garlic etc added early on. Poor little things (they seem to be doing okay...)

I used an ordinary stick hand blender

I put a large portion of the family meal in a mixing jug, added some water to make it smooth, whizzed it up. I then kept some of it for next day - microwave for 30 secs and instant homemade dinner.

Now ds is 12 months he has family food mashed with a fork or given on tray as finger food. He eats all sorts of things.

I have been known to chew food up in me gob and put back onto spoon for dd- it cools it down too!. Other than that, a fork or blender !

Stick blender here or if I was batch cooking sometimes a little mini processor thing I have.

My mil bought me a chopper thing from Pampered Chef. I threw it out as I just couldn't get my head around it, why not just use a knife?!

Fork? Mini blender? Blw?

I've not blended anything for a while either mash it with a fork or cook stuff within an inch of mush and let them chop at it!

Masher or fork

We used a hand blender and pureed a bit of whatever we were having.

If we were eating something unsuitable for babies (e.g. salty or processed crap) we would steam some veg and mash it with a fork. If we did this we would make extra and freeze it in small single portion containers.