ideas for healthy , easy to pepare meals for 8month old

[bubblepop]

what do you feed to your baby? would anyone like to give me some ideas for meals please? thanks everyone. x

Annabel Karmel's book is a pretty good starter. Try the library if you don't want to buy it.
Veg soup. Chicken casserole. Hard boiled egg yolk and home made baked beans (soak haricot beans overnight, boil for half hour in water, drain, bake for 1 hour or longer with tins toms and worcestershire sauce). Mince, potatoes and peas. Fish in cheese sauce. Macaroni cheese. Lentil soup. Liver and onions.
Obviously all without stock or seasoning.
Home made stock- boil a cooked chicken carcass with chopped onions, carrots, leeks, celery, swede, parsnip, few black peppercorns, 4 pints water and bouquet garni if you want, you could leave out the chicken for veg stock. Boil for 2 hours, or I do mine overnight in the slow cooker then I get cracking with the cooking in the morning.
What kind of inspiration are you looking for? Are you a bad cook, or just need a nudge. I was the latter, when you need it you need it!

For really quick easy to prepare meals, I do cream cheese melted over chicken, apricots and broccoli. Also pasta with courgettes, covered with "Peter Rabbit" tomato sauce. And the advantage of both these meals is that both me and DH can share them too. But I whizz them through the blender for my little one.

I used a great baby food provider called Baby-Pure. They do homemade organic babyfood which is made to suit all ages and comes in different textures - is made to order as well. I think they deliver nationwide but email them to see or go to website which is www.baby-pure.co.uk. Hopes this helps - and a great way to feed without all the hard work and worry !! I used them for 12 months and it was a godsend.

i think you'll find the hard work and worry is worth it when you have the satisfaction of seeing your child eat something you've lovingly cooked for them. do you work for this company, chippyt, by any chance?

No I don't but I do have 2 little ones, and their food was a fantastic back up to my own cooking - we all run out of time at some point.

I forgot to say that I totally agree with Aitch71 - it is such a good feeling when your child eats the food you have made for them - and what better start can you give them. However, sometimes (and I am sure others will agree), and especially if we work, we do not always physically have the time to cook, and the meals that we might cook for ourselves and our partners will not always be suitable to be blended down ie chilli, curry or anything with nuts etc. Sorry if I have offended you Aitch71 I was just giving an option.

Oh and the depression that hits you when they chuck it on the floor, after licking it a bit!

No, you didn't offend me Chippyt, but what you wrote was absolutely word-for-word identical to something you had posted on another thread and to be honest it sounded like an advert to me, especially because they were the only two things you had ever posted on Mumsnet.

You didn't mention using the Baby-Pure products as a back up to your own cooking at all, in fact you said it was "a great way to feed without all the hard work and worry !! I used them for 12 months and it was a godsend."

It sounded to me like you were promoting the use of this firm exclusively, which i would find dangerous, not least for the expense but also because that would leave the OP tied in to buying these products for a long time as the child would be so used to them.

Firms are supposed to pay for advertising on this site but it does happen that people appear for short periods just to enthuse about particular services then are never heard of again.

Plus the OP had asked for healthy meal ideas, which I certainly had interpreted as looking for recipes and on the other thread the OP had asked about how to get her child to eat savoury foods, so your answers didn't strike me as particularly relevant and i was naturally suspicious.

If i have got completely the wrong end of the stick, therefore, i wholeheartedly apologise.

I work, by the way, and i don't have any problems with making food for my dd every day. But that's probably because we haven't gone the pureeing route so there is much less preparation, actually hardly any at all.

And mum2funkydude, i heard nigella lawson say a cool thing about purees etc. she basically said to freeze everything so that if the baby refuses it outright you won't feel so bummed out about it cos after all it's only a couple of ice cubes. but if you have made it there and then, she reckoned, you'll be more stressed about it. i thought that was a really interesting perspective.

Hi Sorry for not having replied earlier - been away with my little ones to "Gammas" for an extended stay !! and she doesn't have the internet. Anyway just read reply to previous - yes, I agree I have posted to another post but I thought they were similar questions - all I was doing was offering an opinion. Baby-Pure was a god send - it took me absolutely ages cooking and pureeing - luckily my children did enjoy my food - but due to circumstances, I needed to return to work - albeit part time - but I wanted to spend my spare time interacting with my children, and therefore found I was cooking in the evenings and not spending quality time with hubby!!! Hence Baby-Pure!! It is great if you really do have the time to home cook and all I was offering was another option if you don't.

end of my last thread " if you don't want to spend your spare time cooking but want to give wean your children on homecooking."

Have just read previous thread again and would just like to say that Baby-Pure did not result in me being tied into a product for any length of time because what they offered was a home-cooked alternative. If I had had the time I would have home-cooked for my children whilst weaning and I found absolutely no problem with feeding them my own food compared with the food they had been given by Baby-Pure. In fact, I would say that it complimented my own cooking and certainly did not "tie me in" to Baby-Pure's food just because they were used to it. I do understand that this is the reason for Baby-Pure - to give us a back up - not to take over !

For goodness sakes, chippyt, it's okay, relax.
you had never posted before ever, you posted two word-for-word identical posts which sounded, frankly, like adverts. and they still do, as i read them. And neither were terrifically relevant to the OPs, as i recall.

I checked to see if you were a regular poster by searching for your name as it is pretty much against the rules to advertise on MN without paying a fee.

You weren't, these were the only two things you had ever written, so I asked you if you worked for the company. You didn't reply. For ages. And you never posted again. I know, because I checked.

Turns out you were on holiday or something, you came back and said that you didn't work for the company, and i explained why i had come to my quite reasonable conclusion and apologised if i had got the wrong end of the stick.

So why are you dragging it all up again weeks later? Just leave it, they were your first two posts and i would still swear blind that they sound like adverts for a baby-food company, you did a weird thing... that's all. Forget about it.

Good bit of detective work there Aitch71, I was chuckling to myself when I read the threads.