So stressed about cooking for baby

[AbsolutelyUselessMum]

I am so ashamed that I've changed my username for this.

I'm 30 and I absolutely hate cooking. I thought that I wasn't the only one, and that quite a few others never cooked. But I've got an 11 month old daughter, and have suddenly realised that I can't keep giving her pouches until she goes to school

I've done some research and bought some supposedly easy books (eg What Mummy Makes), I plan to batch cook as much as possible, but it just feels so overwhelming. I see a recipe for fish fingers that looks easy, then I realise I'll have to think about the potatoes and the veg as well... plus the other two meals for the day! I know, I sound ridiculous. This kind of thing seems to be second nature to everyone else. I know, I know, cooking properly will be much healthier for me and DH as well (we currently live off ready meals or ready done sauces etc, but organic and high quality ones).

I suppose I'm posting here because I want to know...

Was anyone else like me, and how did you transition to being a cook?? Were you left with enough time to sleep and shower and actually spend time with your child?!

Are there any useful tips and shortcuts, other than batch cooking and trying to eat the same things as a family rather than cooking separate meals?

Gosh I feel like such a failure of a human being.

Yes a tomato sauce like PP linked to is brilliant and you can do so much with it! Lasagne, bolognese, soups, salsa (spicy or unspiced!), chilli- maybe not for baby but for you ...That would be one of the first things I would learn and it is a doddle. You can do something nice in 45 minutes and it'll last several meals.

I remember a TV chef saying that one of the biggest beginners problems was using small blunt knives so chopping veges became a chore. If your knives aren't great it maybe worth getting some and a thing to sharpen them with. This helped me a lot when I started cooking, everything became faster and more fun. I got mine quite cheap from Argos, they are not fancy but do the job well.

Ds is 7 months, his favourite at the moment are spaghetti bolognese and omelette. Both super easy (bolognese I batch up 4 meals worth for the 4 of us) omelette is just grated cheese and an egg fried 😄

I'd leave out onions/garlic until she's older

Gosh, really? I’ve been including both of these in my DS’s meals since he was 7 months! Should I not have been?

This my go to. Just chop up all the veg and cook them, then whizz it up. Then just add pasta. Makes huge batches.

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/pasta-tomato-hidden-veg-sauce

This looks good, I will give it a try. I’m assuming you leave out the caster sugar though?

@newmum234

I'd leave out onions/garlic until she's older

Gosh, really? I’ve been including both of these in my DS’s meals since he was 7 months! Should I not have been?

My kids have all had onions, garlic and a even little chilli since they started solids. It never occurred to me to miss them out! They will try anything now.

Try some student cookbooks. That was how I learnt to cook. They are very easy, basic recipes. Then you can progress onto ones for busy parents, which generally assume a basic level of cooking knowledge.

Just came on to say that while all the tips and hints on this thread are brilliant, please don't stress yourself out thinking that every single meal your baby eats has to be a lovingly home crafted hot effort. It's fine to give her a cold breakfast and lunch, it's fine to use some ready meal or freezer food options (plenty that are suitable for children in terms of salt content etc) or its fine to do an in between where you use a jarred sauce added to home-cooked meat and veg, or do tinned baked beans and sausages alongside scrambled eggs and toast etc. Lots of people are not very confident or skilled cooks and their children grow up just fine, perfectly healthy. By the time she's 2 she'll probably be screaming blue murder at even a suggestion she eats anything other than nuggets and chips anyway so your beautifully balanced meal plans with a range of fruit and veg, macro-nutrients, vitamins etc will go down the toilet anyway!

It's great that you are making the effort to learn and improve but I'd say it's far better if she gets a couple of home cooked meals a week at first and you use whatever's easy the rest of the time, than you go mad, try and do 100% home cooking, burn out, give up and go back to ready meals all the time so if that's what it takes that's great. You can always build up your repertoire of simple meals gradually until you've got a good stock in your freezer and you've made them so many times you can do it in your sleep, and then expand to new horizons!

There's several packet things you can easily pick up in the supermarket. My 9mo loves falafel and humous as a easy meal.
Pasta and grated cheese always goes down well.
Omelette & mushroom is quick and easy.
I tried him with pasta tortellini today and that seemed to go down well.
Vege burgers from the freezer section.
All out the packet or quick boil.
You can make it as complicated and try to cook and freezer prep or work out what works for you and your little one will like.
There are baby freezer meals if you get stuck,

Also like above, there’s no way of going from eating ready meals every day to a super convenient cook. Just start slow.

There’s no harm in baby carrying on with some ready stuff for now. Try swapping one meal a day for something else, try a new recipe once a week. In a few months time you will have done it gradually and not overwhelmed yourself

Frozen veg is fine btw. It’s just as healthy, and easy to have in if the fresh used up. You can get those mixed bags to start you off with.

Mine only ever has a hot evening meal, lunch is either a sandwich with some fruit & veg or a picky plate of food, maybe cheese on toast if I'm feeling fancy! I save a portion of our dinner and she has it the next day - it's all pretty basic stuff as she's so fussy, things like pasta, chilli (not too spicy), toad in the hole, fish & wedges, cauliflower cheese. Fish fingers are brought, curry is made with a jar of paste, pesto also comes from a jar! I do a batch of pasta sauce every month or so and pop it in the freezer for easy meals.

@newmum234 yup, leave the sugar out. Its also a great way of using up any veg lurking in the back of the fridge.

I use orzo pasta too, which is perfect for babies as its small

Ive also been using garlic and onions!

Annabel Karmel's book Quick and Easy Toddler Recipes is brilliant. These actually are quick and easy, unlike similar books that claim to be so but actually involve 30 mins of peeling and chopping!

Basic breakfast. My 13 month olds fave breakfast at the moment is dried Cheerios and chopped fruit

Lunch - picky lunch. Crackers, bits of cheese, ham, maybe some philidelphia or pate on the crackers. Cucumber sticks. Basically anything to hand that's in the fridge ready to go.

Dinners - meat, carb, veg. Not ashamed to say that someday he has lovely boiled potatoes steamed veg chicken etc and some nights it's waffles, fish fingers and peas.

I'm a terrible cook and my DH does most of the household cooking however if I'm doing the kids food that day, that's my basic formula above.

Oh garlic and onions are fine. My son's been eating curry and rice since 6 months ISH - made with both!

Some ideas for you, that are really low effort! Things that do several days, IYSWIM.

Roast a chicken. Serve with small potatoes cooked in the pan alongside the chicken. Have frozen peas or sweetcorn cooked in the microwave. None of that is complicated, and your daughter can eat it all except for packet gravy.

Put left over cooked chicken in a pan, add a cup of rice and two cups of water. Some garlic, and peas. Bring to the boil then turn it off and let it stand for ten minutes or so. Chicken risotto. Again, your dd can eat it.

Fry some chopped bacon and onions. Add to left over chicken in a pan with two cups of pasta shapes, 4cups of water and a squirt of barbecue sauce. Top with cheese and bake. New York chicken pasta. Grown ups have more barbecue sauce, dd doesn't.

If you did that one week, with your usual meals in between, you'd have made great steps without much effort!

You don't have to follow recipes to make edible and healthy food.

I cook:
Boiled pasta/rice/potato( without sauce)

• microwave broccoli/peas/peppers from frozen
• oven-baked or pan-fried meat/fish (again no condiments required). Sometimes the veg gets pan fried or stewed with the meat. I know this doesn't sound tasty, but my child happily eats it and the adults can add sauce at the end.

If a child is willing to eat steamed/baked/pan-fried fillets of fish, why bother making fish fingers from scratch?

My DD is 13 months and I've only just started to cook proper food for her! She lived on pouches and purées so far as we did spoon feeding.
But, like you, if got into the rut of pouches and veg sticks/cheese/snacks for her and ready meals & takeaways for us!

I can definitely recommend the cheese twists and cornflake chicken dippers in the "what mummy makes" book. They're both freezable and really easy to do. We are having the dippers in about 10 mins with sweet potato chips. (We all had veg at lunch time)

But I do also have chicken nuggets & fish fingers in the freezer, life's too short to make everything from scratch

I hate cooking!

So I used to make extra of everything, and freeze the extra, I also always had frozen veg in, works wonders for a side for a child.

For days where I was struggling for time, or didn't have much left over I would buy a few of the Little Dish meals, my kids loved them, and when they got a bit older I'd add a side of frozen veg to bulk the meal out a bit.

My children were blw, as in all honesty it was easier for me, and so ate what we ate, within reason from 6 months.

Any left ovevers, freeze too, such as mash potato, again it's a good base or side for a meal.

I promise it will get easier, and my kids have just had fish fingers, sweetcorn and wedges for tea.....!!

I saw your thread earlier then thought of you when I made DDs dinner tonight - red pasta. We are having a takeaway and this is a staple when she's not having family food.

Make ahead a tomato based purée - this is the only fiddly bit. Chop up some onion, carrot, celery (add garlic if you like, only got onions? Use just onions - you get the idea), add to a saucepan with a little oil and cook till soft. Then add a tin of tomatoes and simmer for 15-25 min. Cool a little then stick in a blender or use a wand to turn it into purée.

Put the purée into ice cube tray(s) and freeze. When frozen you can pop them out and keep in the freezer in a Tupperware.

Then dinner is 2 cubes popped in the microwave for 50sec, mixed with a little cream cheese and a portion of cooked pasta 👌 honestly I struggle to keep off her leftovers 😝

Our 13 month old pretty much eats what we do.
I did slow cooker chicken yesterday with a load of veg. We had loads left over so just mashed it all together (which he loves) and froze about 4 pots?
I made a massive pot of spag Bol today, it’s my sons day at nursery so only me and DH ate today, but what’s left over DS will have for his lunch tomorrow.
Honestly don’t overthink it and make things hard for yourself x

I'm like you as well but I give dc whatever we eat. I separate before adding any salt or spice and he just has it. When younger, I would make it mushy, as he grew older I would cut it into tiny pieces. We eat take outs as well as I cook at least 4 days a week and healthy food. During the day I give him plenty of fruit and veg as snacks and only give him water to drink. I struggle as well but use leftovers for next day or put it in freezer. My mum makes healthy soups and she will pop them in little Tupperware and drops them off to me to go in the freezer. Loads of batch cooking, making him eat what we eat minus the spices and generally easy toasties, scrambled eggs, weetabix and fruit as snacks is good. They don't really eat so much anyway and I know it takes a lot of effort if you cook separately 3 x a day for baby and especially if your repertoire is limited like mine I get you.

OP I was like you.... and I am still like you

Luckily I married a chef so he cooks most nights. When he's at work it's frozen fish fingers, chips and peas or pizza for dinner🤣 my kids are still alive.

I just despise cooking, it really stresses me out. I hate the prep, chopping everything takes forever. I hate trying to cook more than one element of a meal at the same time, I can cook a curry with a jar sauce but if I have to cook rice any other way than in pouch in a microwave then I get really flustered (tbf even the microwave pouches have me flustered sometimes). I'd rather scrub toilets than cook a meal.

I learnt to cook when my baby turned 6 months old, so you can do it! I started with basic recipes of family favourites like lasagne, bolognaise, homemade pasta sauces, roast chicken, toad in the hole. I worked my way through about 20 recipes and eventually just learnt to do them so it became easy. Then i became more confident about changing ingrdients, subsituting or adapting recipes to suit my kids better, or using up whatever we had in the fridge. 7 years on I feel confident as a family cook and can make lots of meals. However we also use lots of shortcuts like frozen veg, pizza as a treat, we will use curry sauce in a jar and so on as life is way too short to make everything from scratch every day.

My.top advice for a really simple, quick and healthy family meal is to get 2 or 3 fillets of fish, spread with pesto and wrap in foil. Bake for about 15mins. While they are baking, boil some rice and veg like fine green beans or peas, and carrot sticks. We use frozen veg for this so there's no chopping or peeling needed. Rice takes about 10-15mins if you buy the quick cook stuff or the microwave packs take 2mins and are fine for kids as well.

You can flake the fish and mix with the rice for your DC to feed herself or you can spoon feed her if you prefer. You and DH can have rice with fish/pesto on top and veg on the side

We eat a lot of scrambled eggs here, easy to grate cheese and carrot into them, splash of milk and microwave in minutes. My DS is fussy so it’s the only unprocessed protein that’s easy to get into him without a battle.

Dhal is an easy one to batch cook, pack with veggies and to freeze. I have a silicone muffin tray with freezers baby/toddler size portions then Chuck the blocks into a freezer bag. Cous cous is the quickest thing to serve it with, meal in minutes again.

Oven cooking is good too and you can bring it in and leave it to cool. So, like potato wedges or sweet potato wedges. Just chop, Chuck them in the oven for 20 mins and done. Serve with basic veg boiled on the hon like a few broccoli and cauliflower florets or peas and sweetcorn. Usually pair this with something not completely healthy like fish fingers or sausage.

Pasta bakes are very easy. Or pasta with cream cheese, chopped ham and peas mixed through.

I hate cooking too. I’ve not had time to batch cook for a while (bad pregnancy and small DS2 at the moment) but hope to have time soon. In between, DS1 is eating a lot of the meals above. Also nursery feeds him so that helps 😆