Tell me what you feed your one year old

[Junipergray]

im really interested to see what other people are feeding their 12+ month babies. I feel like we’re not really getting it right.

I know lots of people will say they eat what we eat, but that often doesn’t work for us.

can I get some typical daily meals your fed your little ones for lunch and dinner please?

Mine is 12 months. I give him what we have but make substitutions. For example we had sausage, mash and veg. I didn't want him to have the sausages because of salt content so I made him some scrambled egg to go with his instead. I also try to freeze small portions of dinners that have been suitable for him so if we have something that won't work I don't have to cook something from scratch for him.

Mine really did eat what I ate a lot of the time.

Lunches could be breadsticks, cheese, chicken, fruit/veg. French toast. Scrambled eggs, beans, toast. Soup (time amount in a suction bowl) fir dipping bread. Yogurt.

Dinner, was a version of what I was having. Potato wedges are easy to pick up. Cooked veg - carrots (baton) brocolli and cauli florets, green beans etc..any thing that can be picked up and chewed on. Strips of meat. Fusilli pasta. When they have mastered a spoon , shepherd's pie, fish pie, rice, curry. Naan bread, pitta. Honestly, my 2 had what I had with some minor adaptions.

My baby is 11 months and we usually all eat the same, recipes from a family book suitable from weaning. Examples:
Breakfast - usually porridge with peanut butter or fruit, blueberry 'muffins' (sugar free), banana & egg pancakes, porridge fingers with greek/natural yoghurt
Lunch - scrambled egg with spinach, various veg muffins (spinach & sweetcorn a fav), cheese twists, spinach & ricotta puff pastry parcels, tortilla roll ups (grated carrot & cucumber, natural yoghurt & soft cheese), left overs from tea if suitable
Tea - spinach Mac & cheese, cauliflower gnocchi, pizza on tortilla with veg toppings, veg fries & dip (courgette, mushroom & avocado with breadcrumbs), lentil Dahl, lentil spag 'bol'

We're veggie but I do occasionally give her fish

8 almost 9m old.
Breakfast today - banana, greek yoghurt, oat cracker.
Lunch today - hummus, breadsticks, easy peeler, pulled pork leftovers.
Dinner- butternut squash chickpea and lentil Dahl with rice, apricots.

Other regular lunches include avocado and toast, scrambled egg and bagels, cream cheese/cheddar/ham sarnies, baked beans, pesto pea and sweetcorn fritters, blueberry pancakes, homemade soup (thick with chunks of bread to soak it up and to hold).

Dinners are - whatever I can throw at baby quick enough. Baby gets hangry!

Dinner tonight for my DD was salmon (shoved in foil and into the oven), boiled broccoli and some melty puffs

And we are the same as you- rarely eating the same as her, and hardly ever at the same time as it just doesn't line up (apart from at weekends)

I use the slow cooker a lot, shove it on before work and it's done by dinner. Shepherd's pie, spag bol, veg and lentil curry.... I tend to serve his up and then add more flavour to ours. a lack of salt etc to me is bland!
I made salmon fishcakes and sweet potato fries today... He ate the sweet potato fries and acted like I was poisoning him with the fishcakes so he had a back up pouch. Not every day is a win 🤷

Why doesn’t that work for you? That would be a good place to start?

Even if the timings don’t work, save your dinner from the night before and just give that to her the next day at her tea time?

My DD is just over one and half.

today-

Breakfast- 2 scrambled eggs
snack- ginger biscuit
Lunch- pot of jelly, half a banana, half a kids sized toastie from the M&S cafe
Snack at soft play- A small baked oat bar and she shared a packet of quavers with me
Dinner- blue cheese pasta (cream, shallots, Gorgonzola, beef stock- blended) and about 1/4 piece of minute steak cut into bite sized pieces. Teaspoon of sautéed spinach.

Strawberries and a mini milk for pudding.

My little one is nearly 16 months
Today she's had 1.5 weetabix with oat milk
4oz oat milk
A kiddilicious fruit bake thing
Lunch was most of a marmite sandwich, a few crisps, blueberries and a few raisins
This afternoon she had a few more crisps to finish the bag
Tea was fish pie with brocolli followed by yogurt
6oz oat milk

I try not to complicate it and she has beans on toast/jacket potato/fish fingers a fair amount

My DS didn’t get his first tooth until 11 months and he really did struggle with eating what we had at that age.

I used to make a lot of risottos, orzo pasta (or the baby star shaped pasta). Cous cous with cream cheese mixed in.

Cottage pie, bolognese, things that didn’t need much chewing really.

This little book is quite useful on weaning and food, and helping them build healthy habits. It also came with a free recipe sheet for little appetites and things they can help make that are just also super easy for busy parents
www.amazon.co.uk/Everday-Expertise-Building-Everyday-Children-ebook/dp/B0CPD31YFK

At 12 months my daughter ate 2 spoons of Weetabix for breakfast. A handful of peas for lunch and sweetcorn for dinner.

At 13 months she ate her first meal

At 15 months she started eat 3 meals. She was very slow to engage with weaning! Her meals will seem weird as she has a lot of food allergies and we have find ways to live in a world without dairy, nightshades and alliums amongst other things!

I know lots of people will say they eat what we eat, but that often doesn’t work for us.

Is that because of timings eg you aren't eating at the same time as them? Or because you think the food isn't suitable?

If a timing thing, we used to save some leftovers from any meals we could, and give DD1 those the next day. So for example keep a bit of bolognese sauce, or a bit of curry etc and just cook a small amount of pasta/rice for them the next day. Obviously not everything is suitable for reheating but on those occasions we gave her jacket potato, omelette, some pasta with passata, garlic, cheese etc.

Now we just eat early with both DDs (4, and 18 months) and they eat what we eat.

It’s not a timing issue that’s stopping us giving him our food. We just don’t eat a lot of stuff that he can have. We tend to have a lot of quite spicy food and there’s not really a simple way of cooking portions with less spice without a lot of faff. We don’t really eat things like spag bol or cottage pie.
this isn’t every day, there are days where we’ll just have some meat and veg so will of course keep some in a tub for him to eat the next day. Anything we can share, we will but it seems we are more often that not eating things we wouldn’t give him just yet.
he’s also a little bigger who will happily eat jacket potatoes and beans and nursery but will he eat that at home - of course not!

I made stuff without spice and then added after. It meant things were often quite as nice for us, but means mine eat very ‘exotic’ foods now. One still doesn’t like spice but is improving. I also stopped salting food and have not restarted (except bread)

I used to batch cook for Dd because the stuff I ate never translated well into BLW food for her. Unless I was having fish/meat etc which I could pan fry separately and serve with noodles and veggies.

If you get small containers you can have a drawer in the freezer that has 6/7 different versions of meals that you can zap in the microwave on days where you want to eat something different. And then add in some protein/steamed veg etc.

Babies can have spice? I don’t understand the issue?

I wouldn’t give her a scotch bonnet pepper- but my DD frequently eats food spiced with various curry powders, cayenne, fresh red and green chillies. We eat lots of fresh curry at some and it’s certainly not mild. For a quick meal, she loves the golden curry hot cubes to make katsu with some chicken nuggets. When we have very spicy seasoned meats, I just put hers to one side of the pan and season hers slightly differently, and give her a creamy dip.

Just give her your food with some natural yogurt in it if it is mouth burningly hot. I once made a really spicy noodle dish that was too much for me, so added a bit of peanut butter and cream to dilute it down a bit for her.

babies do not need to eat bland food. Seasoning and spice is important to developing a varied palate.

I agree with @GavinHendersonsChipPan. Unless it's ridiculously spicy, they can have it. I've never avoided giving DDs spice.

Our 13mo rarely eats our dinners - we like Gousto and tend to cook after she goes to bed.
She’s also at nursery four days a week so gets two cooked meals a day there! On a nursery day I’d do weetabix with mashed banana, or a toasted bagel half with butter, for breakfast, then a snack of cream cheese on crackers or a yoghurt after nursery.
Today she’s off nursery. We had banana pancakes for breakfast (hers with plain yoghurt, mine with maple syrup), breadsticks and raita for snack (practising dipping things), a Tesco cheesy butternut squash pasta baby ready meal and some veggie crisps for lunch (I had beans on toast), and we’re going to make a Spanish tortilla with red pepper and peas for her tea.
At the weekends we might share an omelette for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, and she’ll have her own tea - I think this weekend it’ll be salmon fishcakes (batch cooked and frozen) with peas. I make a batch of ratatouille and freeze that in small portions for her to have on pasta or potato, or make a chilli with less spice and freeze that.
I eat simple stuff with her to model eating, but I don’t want to spend my dinner time picking up thrown spoons and only getting fo eat properly once she’s finished anyway. She eats more ready meals than I’d like because often I cba meal prepping, but they’re organic and sugar/salt free, so probably as good as anything I could cook anyway.

Mine just has what we have. There may be the odd day once a week where we want takeaway or oven pizza later on and they'll have something different but for me it was really important to eat as a family and for my son to see us eat all the same food so he didn't feel different and to hopefully model and build positive relationships with eating.

Mine is 18 months but breakfast is normally weetabix, ready brek and a fruit pouch and toast if he's still hungry.

Morning snack is always fruit with normally an mini oat bar or breadsticks to go with.

Lunch can vary, it can be fish fingers, toast and beans, baked potato with different fillings, sandwiches and veg sticks, cheese and beans on toast, homemade soup etc and a banana to follow .

Mid afternoon snacks is normally crumpet and peanut butter or cheese snd crackers.

Tea can be anything from chilli, curry, bolognese, gnocchi, mince and tatties, various pasta dishes, roast dinners and then yoghurt and once every so often I'll bake a proper pudding from one of my toddler cookbooks.

I try to ensure that lunch and tea try to include a protein, carb and veg. He also goes to nursery 3 days a week and eats well there!

My 17m eats what we do

Today was 1.5 weetabix
Half banana

Snacks
Fromage frais
Gingerbread biscuits

Lunch
Pasta bake courgette cheese sugar snap peas

Snack
Yoghurt pouch

Dinner
Spag bowl

If you cook your curry/chilli etc in the slow cooker you can cook it without salt and chillis and portion out plenty for baby as well as some to freeze for another day, then add the salt and chilli to your taste and leave to cook for another hour. Then all eat together.

We also cook separately for DC (18 months) because our meals are often too salty, far too spicy or just wouldn’t reheat well - we eat after DC goes to bed. I batch cook a lot so DC still has things like curries and chillies but milder versions.

Breakfast is usually cereal (weetabix, porridge or shreddies)

Lunch something like the below

• Sandwiches
• Omelette
• Banana pancakes
• Cheese and crackers
• Crumpets
• Pastry pinwheels

(all the above I’ll serve with things like cucumber, fruit, toddler crisps/puffs etc)

• Jacket potato with cheese and beans or tuna mayo
• Something on toast - cheese, scrambled egg, beans, spaghetti hoops
• Pitta topped with tomato puree, cheese and oregano, grilled to make a little pizza (also do this for dinner on a wrap and serve with sweet potato wedges).

Dinner
Things I’ll often batch cook:

• Pasta sauce then add fresh cooked pasta
• Mac & cheese
• Pasta bolognese
• Beef or bean chilli & rice
• Chicken or fish curry & rice
• Fish pie
• Cottage pie

And when I have more time (ie days I’m not at work):

• Fish fillet / chicken with some sort of potato and veg
• Sausage, mash and veg/beans (only rarely because of salt content)
• Also use these days to make one of the batch cook meals, feed one portion and freeze the rest.

Babies can have spice. In fact it’s better to use herbs and spices rather than just offering plainer food. Or you could set
a bit of it aside before you add more spice.

In the nicest way, if you had my daughter to feed for a week you would see that there's definitely scope to expand what is young child food and what is tasty food for everyone.

We made a lasagne the other day. Easy until you know my daughter is allergic to beef, onions, garlic, tomatoes and dairy! None of my Italian friends would think it was a lasagne but it was sort of like it. We used pork mince flavoured with lots of mustard using sweet potato mash as the sauce and a white sauce with oat milk dairy free butter a little mustard and lots of nutritional yeast

We are a big fan of Currys but the onions garlic, tomato, aubergine, chilli and coconut allergies make many a challenge! We do things like biryanis with lots of cumin and coriander with a hot normal curry on the side for the grown up. Middle eastern cooking is easy to adapt to our restrictions.

My daughter is in child care 4 days a week so for us they are days to eat more norm food and she has a snack or leftovers. At the weekend we try to make two meals that she will eat but make enough to put a portion of two in the fridge/freezer for another day when we eat the foods she can't eat.