BLW cookbook

[evangelinelily]

Hey BLWers out there. Would any of you recommend getting the BLW cookbook out there because you think it was really useful and use it all the time, or do you just use your own recipes or pinch from online BLW recipes?

I bought the book after looking at some of the recipes on line, some are really great and the intro section, though short, is useful. I preferred having a book to lots of printouts that I usually misplace or bin by mistake.

We use quite a lot of the recipes as family food, never did porridge fingers! Some things like the casseroles/stews are quite adaptable to other ingredients.

I did actually do a mix of the BLW stuff plus spoon feed (real porridge!) but I did find the finger food suggestions really helpful when stuck for inspiration.

I hate to say it but I (and DH and both children) really didn't like the sugar free muffins, but we all like the Annabel Karmel ones which have loads of fruit too but also enough sugar to be tastier...

We mostly just used a version of what we were cooking or leftovers from the night before, it was a great incentive to cook more from scratch without salt - my bfing appetite and lack of sleep had not helped with healthy meal planning in the first 6 months! . I also used online recipes, there are some good ones at mylovelylittlelunchbox.com/ that have good step by step guides and are tasty enough for adults as well

Not got a book, but thinking about getting one so watch with interest

I always got confused by a BLW cookbook when the idea of BLW was to eat what you're eating / cooking.

If it's more for ideas and inspiration then buy it but if cook food such as bollanaise, curry, lasagna, Sunday dinners, Stirfrys, fajitas etc etc baby can have all of these. You'd be better off buying a decent family cook book.

The only change I made too cooking once dd was weaning was not to add salt. I still used a normal stock cube etc.

BLW is awesome as it's so lazy. Nothing changed in our meals

I thought the whole point was that you just fed them family meals. Sometimes family meals need a spoon- porridge fingers seem mad- just have porridge.

I got the cookbook to give me some ideas in the first couple of months when the food needed to be chunky as DS's pincer grip hadn't developed yet. (Just giving things on a spoon wasn't an option - he would feed himself yogurt and sometimes porridge on a spoon but refused spoons otherwise!)

I found the book useful at that stage; the intro was helpful and the recipes convinced me that he really could just eat our food and gave some good lunch ideas. But I can't say it's a recipe book that I've used regularly as DS got older. A lot of the recipes are meals I cooked already - roasts, cottage pie, toad in the hole etc - so didn't need a recipe for. But I do still return to a few recipes in it.

Handy hints for using the BLW book...

If making the cheese and spinach muffins, which my children like, do not use the suggested paprika! They were far too hot for adults and the children dud not like the first batch!

If making the chickpea patties, maybe use less garlic...I love garlic but even I found them too garlicky, the baby and toddler barely touched them.

The cheese straws are good but I make them as flat biscuits cut from rolled out dough and they seem better like that.

I've ordered it, only £7 on Amazon this week. I hope it'll have some ideas to make finger food more interesting. Am so sleep deprived I need to be spoon fed ideas. Ha ha.

I think I've still got a book on BLW - I read the beginning of it and got pissed off when it was very evangelical about BF (which I wasn't able to do so am very defensive about it - it probably wasn't THAT evangelical). You're welcome to it if you want it, although I can't honestly say it had recipes in it.

Is it ok to use a normal stock cube? Isn't that like adding salt?

I bought a couple of recipe books when weaning DS1 to give me ideas and I still use them now. Best one I bought was this one by jenny maizels: www.amazon.co.uk/Finger-Food-For-Babies-Toddlers/dp/0091889510 the meatballs and tomato sauce with spaghetti is one of our favourite meals now - we got it quite cheap online, but looks a bit pricier now (7 quid) maybe see if your local library has it?