Fancy foods in weaning books

[PinkPlantCase]

I’m planning to start weaning soon, I’ve looked at a few books and lots of them have a plan for the first 30 days or so.

My question is should I give baby lots of things that we don’t normally eat as a family? Sorry I couldn’t think of another way to phase it for the title!

For example we never have Kale, Swede, cauliflower, butter beans, cannellini beans or spring onions. We also don’t really buy avocados.

Does it matter if I didn’t give these to baby as we do the first tastes of things? Will I regret it later on?

It just seems odd to me that we’d be getting baby used to tastes that we never really eat when the aim in my mind is to have DS eating the same food as us at meal times.

There's no need to specifically buy those things if you don't usually. However, they mention those things because they all have a lot of nutrients...especially kale and the beans and avocados.

Avocados are a great food for babies as they're rich in protein and soft and require no cooking.

Think of them in the same way as you might think of a banana in terms of how easy they are to serve. And like meat or cheese in terms of how filling they are.

You can offer avocado as the 'main' part of a lunch for example. Accompanied by rice or pasta and some other veg.

Kale is so full of iron but it's a bit hard to eat and doesn't taste great in many people's opinions as it's a bit cabbagy and tough. I roast it into crispy things which probably removes most of the nutrients anyway lol! Other people whizz it into their pasta sauces...

As long as your baby gets offered plenty of veg don't worry.

Yes I’ve never found Kale to be an enjoyable thing to eat! I’m also not sure they sell it in Aldi

We have a lot of spinach though. I quite often throw it in with whatever we’re having.

Using Avocado as the main part of a meal is a good shout, thankyou! We also eat a lot of egg (have our own chickens) so in my mind they have a similar nutritional value. I might need to double check that.

I think it’s more about getting a range of tastes in there while they are still open to it. So something green and bitter, and either cauliflower or broccoli.
I do find those toddler cookbooks quite ridiculous, though. Seriously, don’t invest time in food only for the baby, it’s so disappointing when it all goes on the floor.
We have changed what we eat to some extent, though. Never thought I’d eat so many lentils. They are also limited by what they can easily eat so where we used to have steak, we now have hamburgers. I suppose if this were a weaning cookbook I’d call it steak haché though.

I found it easier to just feed baby whatever we were having. I started off puréing all these veggies but it went to waste and was a faff.

@CherryRedDMs steak haché 🤣🤣

Thanks for the tips!

Partly I think it depends on how varied and baby friendly your diet is.

Some of the foods you've mentioned are easy to add to other dishes or have as sides and your baby might really like them.

IMO the more foods they like the better. Between the four of them my children like loads of foods that I don't, eggs, mushrooms, and seafood for example and dislike some of my favourites, olives, aubergines and potatoes.

Egg is quite nutritious so you could do that too. It's just a bit more work than peeling an avocado. I did a lot of egg based finger foods and they were very popular.

In general it probably makes sense to feed your baby what you eat and just adjust salt and pepper for them. One of mine was very sensitive to anything that 'burns the mouth' so for a long time I had to avoid pepper, chili and ginger.

You'll probably find that at some point they start rejecting food and develop their own ideas what they want. Both mine did despite me feeding them a varied diet. I still don't cook special foods for the kids though, I just let them off eating bits they really hate.

I don’t know if it’s coincidence but with my eldest DC I gave him absolutely everything when he was weaning. It was like a daily buffet.

He is an absolutely amazing eater now. With my middle child, she had ‘normal’ foods (whatever we were eating, but nothing beyond that really), and she is much, much less adventurous.

The youngest is still a baby but we have tried to be slightly broader with him to try and encourage better eating longer term like our oldest child.

We did exactly the same with both kids after great successes with my first (she ate everything, curries, snails, sushi, persimmons). She’s four and still really curious to try new tastes.
The second reacted completely differently. Things seem to taste stronger to him somehow. There are some inherent individual things you just can’t change.

@CherryRedDMs

We did exactly the same with both kids after great successes with my first (she ate everything, curries, snails, sushi, persimmons). She’s four and still really curious to try new tastes. The second reacted completely differently. Things seem to taste stronger to him somehow. There are some inherent individual things you just can’t change.

Yes. One of mine was particularly fussy between around 18 months and 4. He only wanted very strong flavoured or spicy foods.