Veggie baby friendly meals?

[mummybear1003]

I started weaning my son just over a month ago and he now eats most fruit and veg puréed quite happily (apart from avocado!). I'm now at the stage where I think he's ready to start having more actual meals, and eating more interesting combinations. I'm a bit stuck with what to cook though? I'd ideally like to be able to feed him from the meal I already cook for myself and my partner which is always vegetarian and tends to be pretty uncreative, things like pasta, cottage pies etc, I also use stock cubes most of the time too which I realise I wouldn't be able to do but yeah, any suggestions for meals we might all enjoy? If I enjoy them I can see myself making more of a constant effort rather than resorting to jars a bit too often!

You can get very low salt stock cubes, Kallo do them for example, which are absolutely fine for babies.

Dixie's suggestions are also the sorts of things that I do. You could also do things like risotto, egg fried rice, tofu and veg stir fry with noodles.

Boots sell a vegetarian stock cube that is suitable for babies (low salt) on the baby food aisle. I use those now for risottos etc.

Ooh thank you, I had just looked for a low salt stock cube at my supermarket! No wonder I couldn't find anything!

You don't say how old your little one is but if over 6 months it is a good idea to be introducing finger food along side purées. Some ideas:

Roasted veg has always been popular with my DD. I do sweet potato wedges then chunky batons of veg like courgettes and carrots in olive oil. I tend to add chopped garlic before cooking as roast garlic gives a lovely flavour. This makes nice easy finger food for little hands to hold. You can also sprinkle over some grated cheese for protein.

If you have a blender then houmous is terribly easy to make and obviously much less salty than shop bought. There's lots of recipes on line for quantities but is essentially chick peas, tahini, olive oil, lemon and garlic. Takes 5 mins. Great on toast fingers for baby just starting to feed themselves.

DD loves stir fried veg - baby corn, peppers, mange tout, carrots, bit of Chinese 5 spice or flavours of your choice!

Vegetable chilli goes down well also - I roast peppers, onions, carrots, garlic, courgettes etc altogether first, with spices - cumin, coriander etc, then add to pot with tinned toms and kidney beans and any other beans. She loves to pick up the various bits and bobs and it's all soft from roasting. If you like it really hot just add chilli after scooping out some for your baby.

I've really got in the habit of using herbs and spices for flavour instead of salt, it does help.