Meals for all of us... Recipes hints and tips please!

[mmmerangue]

Hi,

I have a 10 month old who is being successfully weaned, but mainly onto jars. My partner and I eat a lot of ready-to-oven food so a lot of it hasn't really been suitable for him, eg. pie or fish and loads of salt pre-added etc etc... This is something I want to change both for my own diet and my partner and sons'... I feel like he could be the 'eating mostly what we eat at 1 year' sort if only we ate better!

I'm looking for easy and quick things which can be cooked for dinner but shared with a baby, he has 8 teeth and enjoys most flavours that come in jars (not the chickeny/meaty ones but they are actually rank I don't blame him!), as well as bread, fruit, biscuits, etc. He is not great with mashed veg but likes to eat it whole eg. cooked carrot sticks to chew on. My partner is also pretty fussy, but I think the time has come for him to suck it up!!

Some of the things we eat which do get shared with DS:
Lasagne (upset his tummy), stew, toast/ scrambled egg, pasta salad (didn't like it though),... horribly short list!! also cereals etc, porridge but not really anything that you could call a square meal!

If any mumsnetter's have good family favourite recipes to share, or can direct me to a decent meal-planning website or book, I would much appreciate it! I am an almost novice with a few trick shots, and partner is the fan of ready-to-oven, although we are both good cooks with proper instruction...!

There are also some things I'm not sure whether DS can have... like sausages? He had one at christmas dinner and seemed to love it but is it too much fat for regular dinner? Can he have baked beans/ tinned veg although they do add things to it? breaded fish? chicken/meat chunks in stew rather than blended? If not now, when would he be old enough?

This site has some good ideas.

The only things your DS can't have are:

Honey (until 12 months) - risk of botulism
Whole nuts (until around 3-5yo) due to choking risk - nut butters or chopped nuts are fine
Whole grapes (until around 3yo) due to choking risk - halved or quartered is fine

Everything else is fine. Even strips of meat, chunks of fish (best check for bones first or a curry if that's what you fancy. You don't need to worry about it being pureed or blended, or gradually introducing textures.

You could just get yourself a normal healthy cookbook (not aimed at weaning) and use that instead so that you all eat well, remembering to omit any salt from recipes.

I've heard a few friends raved about my daddy cooks. He specialises in what he calls tuesday night dinners. It's a video blogs so you can watch a few videos, try out a few things. And if you do like his style, then you can buy the book. I've never cooked from his blog tho, but like to watch the videos .

They can basically eat whatever we eat from 6mo, minus the few things flisspaps already mentioned. I found DD loves everything smothered in cheese sauce. Any gratin, the veggie cheesy nugget from the blw website, cheese and veg muffins etc.

I was just like you at this stage, too - we mainly ate pasta and stir in sauces having got into the habit when cooking was just too much when we had a baby!

I got a subscription to EasyCook magazine, which was great for relatively easy meals, so I would recommend that. I now use Good Food magazine more, but there are loads of other magazines (cheaper than a cook book just to get you started) or Rachel's Food for Home is good too. I would suggest that you don't aim to become a domestic goddess overnight - just try and include a few meals each week. We still have ready meals on a thursday after swimming! I found that DS treated a lot of things as a finger food, which I wouldn't have thought of, but once he mastered a spoon he switched to that.

Meals which are my favourite standbys are:

1. stir-fry - finely chop and quickly fry a few different veg, garlic, ginger and chilli and meat and add a little soy sauce (you can add more to yours later) and a pinch of sugar. Other good flavours for a sauce are some peanut butter or rice wine/vinegar and sugar and tom puree (sweet and sour) or lime. Serve with rice or noodles
2. Pasta - fry onion, garlic and chopped chicken, add mushrooms and any other veg you like. Good flavours for sauce are - wholegrain mustard, with a little flour to thicken the sauce or some cream cheese.
3. Risotto - but I only do the ones where you add everything, then leave it on the stove, not the ones you have to stand over adding the stock over 40 mins.

agree with www.babyledweaning.com and www.mydaddycooks (am biased on both, though) but have also heard good things about Faye Ripley's books for this purpose.

Just to add to flisspaps' list: salt, they shouldn't have more than 1g a day until they're 1. DS is 10 months too, and when we cook something for us we don't add salt or chilli, and freeze a few small portions for him, it saves a lot of time. We then add salt to our portions.

I think we'll get a slow cooker soon, casseroles are brilliant, lots of vegs and very tasty.

We have some Ella's pouches The Italian One on standby, when I'm in a rush I just add them to pasta and a bit of meat and DS loves it.

Oups, sorry, I've just seen that flisspaps did actually mention salt...

You have to be a bit careful with sausages as they can be a choking risk- chop them lengthways as well as into slices iyswim. They can be high in salt but ok now and again.

We just cook normal stuff but dont add salt and give bits to baby. I made homemade burgers tonight and he ate loads - ds is 7 months btw

A couple of other very simple meals that work well with DD1 (almost 7mo 1month of eating what we eat three meals a day)

Chilli - slowcooker - chop onion and fry off, brown beef (before this is optional you could just throw it in slow cooker), chuck in slow cooker, add garlic powder, mild chili powder, some mixed herbs, a chopped pile of onions, a chopped couple of peppers, kidney beans from can a couple of chopped tomato tins. leave it all day on low. You really can't go wrong. Then serve it with some grated cheese (and for me but not DD more chilli powder and chopped chilis) and bread. DD scoops up the lumps and stuffs it in her mouth.

Steam a load of roughly chopped veg - whatever, it's not important - at the same time stir-fry some meat and onions - beef strips, chicken or whatever - by splitting the cooking of the veg and meat it makes stir-frying really easy as you can not worry about the sizes of the veg or organising the cooking time to make sure it all cooks well (and it works with electric hobs) The veg can just be stirred in to the meat after it's cooked when you're adding the sauce.

For the sauce - if you're having pasta, cream cheese (philadelphia) works very well, and is very quick, just add it to the hot pan maybe with a little milk, stir it all in and have it coat the pasta, meat and veg. But equally you can use tomato, or oyster sauce, or soy sauce or whatever it is you like to add the flavour to the veg.

Lasagne, shepherds pie, roast dinners, chicken strips and potato wedges, baked potato, fish, have also all gone down great.

Fredgeorge isn't adding soy sauce or oyster sauce the same as adding salt? Or do you mean baby portion doesn't have this added?

Yes they will contain salt - but the amount of salt in the whole meal will be less than the salt in bread for example.

Thanks a lot for recommending me and my book! I agree with Aitch, Faye Ripley's books are excellent too and I also really like Jenny Maziels (hope I have spelt that right).

The salt question is an interesting one but was best summed up by Archie's paediatrician (Archie needed one as a baby as he was heavily dairy allergic). He said don't worry about soy sauce and stuff like that. He even said to not worry unduly about salt. His tip was to (if you can be bothered!) do a food diary over several months and you will see that everything balances itself out. If you view salt intake (indeed any intake) on a meal by meal, day by day or even week by week basis, you won't get an accurate picture of how it balances out. In a nutshell, give them soy sauce because it's highly unlikely you will give them meals with soy sauce in it three times a day.

He also said that unless your baby has displayed signs of allergy or is atopic, there is literally nothing you can't give them - apart from one thing and that is honey before 12 months - but even that is under some debate. Obviously you need to be vigilant with nuts, but only from the choking hazard perspective rather than the allergy perspective.

Rightly or wrongly we have been giving our 2nd child, Matilda, grapes since she was about 8 months old. Babies are remarkably adept at working out how to eat things. She is now nearly one and her absolute current favourite is pomegranate seeds!

As a little treat, here is a recipe from my book (this is not available online). It is a huge favourite in our house, is dead easy to make and is a great way of serving sausage without serving sausages, if you see what I mean! It all makes sense in the recipe ;) If you have any more questions, feel free to post them here or email me via my blog...

Baked penne with courgette and home-made Italian sausage

Serves 4
Preparation time 10 minutes
Cooking time 30 minutes

450g dried penne
Olive oil
500ml tomato passata
1 courgette, grated
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 large handfuls of grated extra-mature Cheddar cheese
1 large handful of freshly grated Parmesan cheese
For the Italian sausage mix:
1 tablespoon fennel seeds
500g pork mince
2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 tablespoon mild paprika
Freshly ground black pepper and a good pinch of salt

Preheat your oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4.

Cook the penne according to the instructions on the packet.

Meanwhile, make the sausage mince. You will need to grind the fennel seeds using a pestle and mortar. If you don?t have a pestle and mortar, put the seeds in a plastic sandwich bag and crush them with the tip of a large rolling pin. Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. It is worth taking a little time over this to make sure everything is evenly mixed in.

Heat some olive oil in a frying pan and cook the sausage meat until it is no longer pink.

Pour in the tomato passata, the grated courgette, season with salt and pepper and continue to cook just for a minute or two.

In a large baking dish, mix the cooked penne well with the sausage sauce and cover the pasta with the two grated cheeses. You want to make sure that there is a really good layer of cheese, covering much of the pasta.

Bake in the oven for 20 to 25 minutes, until the top is golden and bubbling.

Sorry, just spotted a misleading statement. The recipe above is not available online i.e. on my blog. The book itself is available online. Sorry for the confusion...

the BBC website has loads of food recipes, amd many are quite simple. You can do a search based on any ingredients you've got in your fridge.

www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/

Thanks a lot everyone,

we are doing very well with fingerfoods (oatcakes, fruit dried and fresh, cooked veg all going down a treat!) but not so good with spoonfed stuff, lots more ideas now, time to hit the supermarket when granny comes to babysit!