Evening meal ideas for my (almost) 1 year old

[MamaBear17]

Hi,
I am really bored of serving the same old stuff to my dd and would like her to eat more family foods rather than just specially prepared mushy baby stuff. However, I have been a vegetarian all of my life and I am just not sure what to offer my dd. I am not raising her to be a vegetarian. My husband eats meat and when she is old enough she will be allowed to choose whether she would like to eat meat like daddy, or not, like mummy. Any ideas or recipes are very welcome xx

Can she not just eat what you and your husband have for dinner?

I was about to ask the same as Rubirosa.

Why can't you just give her whatever you're having?

I'm also veggie but raising a non-veggie :) she eats a lot of stuff with her hands now

• fish fingers
• pasta and sauce (e.g. Get your DH to cook a batch of bolognese)
• cauliflower/macaroni cheese
• meatballs (again cooked by DH and frozen)
• omelette
• jacket potato and beans
• veggie stews with chunky cut veg
• roast chicken, potato and veg

It's often messy, but she goes straight in the bath

My DS likes:

• pasta and bolognese
• pasta with a 'soft cheese & teeny bit of pesto' sauce
• cottage/shepherds pie
• moussaka
• risotto (especially with butternut squash and lots of cheese)
• fishfingers
• sausages - you could try veggie and meat ones?

To be honest the same as what we're having, as Rubirosa suggested upthread (I'm just careful to not add too much salt).

Thank you for the suggestions all. The reason I dont give her what we eat is because firstly we eat later, so no food is prepared for her to have some, and secondly, we eat things like fajitas, curry made with a jar sauce, pasta bake with salad, pie and veggies, or sometimes if it has been a long day, just a sandwich. To be honest, it didnt occur to me that she might eat any of this stuff. I also worry that using a jar sauce for curry and pasta will be too much salt for her x

I give DD last nights dinner, including the jarred sauces. I did cook with minimal salt before 1, but stopped when she turned 12mo. There is no reason she can't have the food you listed.

MamaBear17 DD ate all of the things you mentioned at age 1. If you would be concerned about your DD's salt intake eating that food, then you should really worry about yours too, as your DD is allowed more salt in proportion to her calories from food than you.

How about you just give her some of the previous nights meal that you've kept in the fridge and reheated?

Thanks everyone. To be honest, I have just assumed that the salt would be too high in 'normal' foods rather than checked. I think I need to lighten up. I am so worried about getting it wrong and damaging her I think common sense has gone out of the window!

Curry is really easy to make yourself, as is pasta sauce. (Honest, I am not a good cook!) Homemade pizza is nice, although I make the dough in a bread maker. Fish pie. (Fish is really easy to cook and I get it pre-skinned and boned from the fish counter.)

We often have the One Pot Curry - on BBC website, and have been using low salt stock cubes. My ds also likes (deconstructed) fahitas, just not too spicy.

We feed him what we had for dinner the night before, to get around the fact that he eats an hour earlier than us! He would have pasta with a jar sauce if that was what we were having, I would just give him less sauce than we would have.

I tend to use jarred curry pastes to make quick curries. I have no idea if that is more or less salty than the pre-made sauces. But they are much tastier than the sauces, IMHO! And super quick for midweek dinners. I like Pataks indian ones and Mae Ploy thai ones.

I think one could be lazy sometimes and not to make a red curry from scratch .