Started 6mo DD on purées, now want to move onto BLW...

[NotSoChicAfterAll]

I have been weaning DD for a few weeks now, porridge in the morning, and vegetables & fruit in the evening.
I have been making purees, but she always wants to feed herself and tries and grabs the food out of her bowl, so I thought BLW is a good route to go down.
What are good first BLW foods? Do I need to cook vegetables til they're very soft?

Well, the easiest thing to do is to just give the same as you are having. As long as you don't add salt to your cooking, and use low salt stock cubes etc. You'd have to avoid honey and use full fat milk as well.

However, I often found it wasn't always easy give the same food as I was having. So in the early days I would steam some veg until quite soft and give those. Or things that didn't need cooking like avocado, finely grated carrot, cheese (emmental is a lower salt option), ripe fruit such as pear, nectarines etc. Well cooked scrambled egg, or omelette strips are also good. If you want to entertain yourself and your dd then try noodles or spaghetti! Curly pasta shapes like fusilli can be easier to pick up - pasta and pesto is a winner with most.

The River Cottage Baby and Toddler cookbook has some fab recipes in which are suitable for baby led weaning. The courgette polpettes are particularly tasty.

I got better at cooking things that suit both of us, and gradually moved to having the same meal most of the time.

We gave sweet potato, butternut squash, carrots, parsnip and broccoli spears initially, but he struggled with broccoli so we waited a month until giving him that again (think it was the texture - it made him cough) and he took to it then. Because of that, I also held off on cauliflower until then too, but I think that's just particular of my son, I'm sure many 6 month olds happily gum broccoli and cauliflower.

At first I did want them pretty soft as I didn't want too many big 'hard' lumps breaking off, but its a balance between soft enough to gum but not too soft that they don't disintigrate in their fist. Whatever you offer, you'll want it in 2 inch long sized strips so it peeks out the top of her fist and roasting them can be a good way of offering veg as they have a nice sweet taste and the slight 'skin' on them, helps them cope with being squished :-D.

However, what I would say is that if she's keen on the spoon, you could still give her pureed or mashed fruit and veg and preload the spoon and let her feed herself - she will make a mess, but both of mine managed to get a spoon to their mouth straight away (albeit not with all of the contents!)

Porridge fingers are good (google them, you'll get recipes) as a way for getting them to eat breakfast with slightly less mess than preloaded porridge on a spoon.

Yy to everything Eletheomel said as well

Pitta bread strips with humous on are another quick and easy lunch. My DD2 loves them. I gave her carrot and parsnip roasted under a pork roast and she loved chewing on them.