Meal ideas please (BLW)

[kellieb7]

My DD is 7.5 months old and loves food!!, I am doing BLW as she will not even consider being spoon fed. I try to vary her diet as much as possible but it seems to be becoming boring (IMO). She likes solid food that she can hold rather than sloppy food (she doesn't like messy hands ). Any of you experienced mummy's got some ideas for us to try? TIA x

I'm not that experienced as DD is only 8 months, but she likes dried fruit, cucumber sticks, carrot sticks, apple slices, pear slices, toast (these are the non-messy things I can think of, my DD loves making a mess .

Maybe these might trigger inspiration?

I'm even less experienced as DS is only 6 months!

We've had success with slices of butternut squash or sweet potato. Also avocado seems to go down well. Less slippery than your average.

Today I might some tiny beef sausages out of mince and herbs, which were the perfect size for DS' hands and went down well. When there's mess, it tends to crumble off the hands rather than stick to them

I had gone back to work when DS was starting to eat solids. Wasn't planning to BLW but he hated mushed up food and our evening together seemed so short - I used to microwave those little steam packs of veg (mix of three of carrot/cauli/broccoli/green beans/asparagus etc - you know the ones?) and let it cool then give to him with either pieces of poached boned salmon, chicken or roast beef, cold sausage etc cut into pieces easy to hold in a fist. Bit of a 'lazy mother' thing I guess but he loved it, it was super quick, easy for him to hold and chew and reasonably nutritious. He was also obsessed with frozen banana, and breadsticks, which he crammed in like a sword-swallower. Quite alarming.

Thanks ladies, some great ideas. Never even thought of the steamed veg packs so will definately try that. The beef sausages sound good as well as she likes food that sticks to her fingers as she then spends ages picking it off (very impressive to watch )
I made her fish cakes tonight and they went down a treat

I should also clarify the "messy hands", she doesn't mind having food on her hands infact she quite likes it but I have seen/read on here about LO's scooping up food like porridge or bolognese with their hands which she definately wouldn't do (she is very opinionated about such things!!!)

I've found 'morsels' good - pastry cases good - mini quiches made in tart tins, filo-pastry wrapped stuff, fritters of all sorts - veg +SR flour+ egg, fried, falafels and variants on bean/flour mixtures, pasta twist with thick sauce, ravioli/tortolini again plus thick sauce- or leave this off if squidgy-phobic, little buns/muffins again lots of variants