Tell us your best weaning tips and recipes, please - for a chance to win £250 Kenwood products of your choice

[HelenMumsnet]

Hello. Kenwood have asked us to ask you for your best weaning tips and recipes.

We're looking for everything from great foods to start with to how to know when your baby's had enough and from what to look for in a highchair to how to splatterproof your kitchen (if that's even possible!)

We welcome tips from baby-led weaning veterans - and puree purists alike (and any mix-and-matchers, too!). And also tips about great foods/recipes your slightly older baby (7 months plus) might like moving onto once the early weaning days are over.

We'd also love you to post some simple weaning recipes. If you've got a great recipe that you've already loaded into the Weaning section of our Recipes pages, it's fine just to post the link to it on this thread.

Everyone who posts a tip or a recipe will be entered into a prize draw to win a selection of Kenwood products of their choice, worth up to £250.

Please note that Kenwood will be using a selection of your tips, comments, recipes and suggestions on a new Kenwood weaning microsite that is set to go live on Mumsnet at the start of June and in a booklet that is being published in conjunction with Emma's Diary in July and also in Newsgen, the NCT magazine. If you have any questions about this, please email [email protected]

Thank you - and good luck!

[frekkles]

PANCAKES!

Make up a pancake batter (in your kenwood obviously) and add in anything you like (ideas below), then dollop tea spoons of the resulting goo in a frying pan, turn the little critters over when the bubble, cool, and give to your baby. Perfect hand shaped soft but blw friendly food, that you can disguise all manner of foods in!

Breakfast ideas

grated apple, baby porridge and cinnamon
squashed blueberries and mashed bananas
chopped mango and oats
grated carrot, pear and sultanas

Savouries

Mashed potatoes
Tuna and cooked crumbled broccolli
Finally chopped spinach (in your kenwood obviously) , cheese and tomato
mashed sweetpotatoes (in your kenwood obviously) smoked makerel and red onion

Or just add any fruit or vegetable puree ( made in your kenwood obviously) you have in the freezer, to make your purees more blw weaning friendly , and with added fat, protein and carbs.

Allergy friendly too! Can be made simply with flour, eggs, milk and fried in butter to fatten up slow gainers, or made with buckwheat flour for the gluten sensitive or rice, oat or soya milk for the dairy free.

Make in batches and freeze between baking paper for the perfect breakfast or packed lunch in minutes

[SirBoobAlot]

Instead of buying a high chair insert, go to a charity shop and get a cheap cushion and a bunch of cushion covers.

Get lino before starting weaning.

Avocado and banana is a great purée to mash transition food as the texture of the mush is easy to digest.

Buy small pots and batch cook with different fruit and veg to mix and match - ie; 10 1oz pots of potato, 10 1oz pots of parsnip, 10 1oz pots of swede. Take your pick!

Stock up on muslin cloths and baby wipes before you start, and have then handy for each meal.

Get wide shouldered bibs - a little more pricey, but saves so many clothes!

Be prepared for the instant change in poo after weaning starts

[kludge]

Eating banana can result in black specks or strings in baby's nappy.

[SirBoobAlot]

Oh forgot to add -

• Save a little of the water you boiled the veg in to mix with the mash if it seems a little solid.

• Add a bit of baby rice if it seems to thin.

[Habbibu]

Oh, yes, kludge. And blueberries turn poo an evil green colour.

Don't buy baby-specific weaning equipment (eg cookers, blenders, storage) - it's expensive and you really wwon't be using it for purees for long, if at all. Get a decent hand blender type thing, pref with a jug and optional other attachments - much handier for all cooking.

[SirBoobAlot]

We had purple poo here when we first encountered blueberries

[stealthsquiggle]

Just accept that weetabix does set like concrete and will in fact have to be sanded off all surfaces at some point.

..also, if you have a trayless chair to pull up to the table, don't waste money on those sucker-based bowls - they don't work on wooden surfaces (and, come to that, even on plastic surfaces your LO will just regard them as a challenge) - the sooner you accept that bowls are meant to be thrown on the floor, the less stress you will put yourself through.

[BarbaMamma]

Don't dip unpopular food in yoghurt or similar to get DC to eat it - it can foster a long, complicated distrust and suspicion of all foods that are not immediately identifiable.

[lucky1979]

Get some cheap long sleeve t-shirts from asda or somewhere in at least two sizes too big, roll up the sleeves and put a stitch in each fold to keep them up then fold the neckline into a dart on each side and sew a popper on each side of the dart. This means you can keep the wide neckline for getting on and off but also make it smaller when it's on to avoid food stains on collars. Much more comfy that plastic sleeved bibs when your baby is small and if you can get orange t-shirts then carrot becomes much less of a scary laundry prospect!!

[kveta]

Our best emergency lunch is baby pizza - basically tomato puree and cheese on toast. cooled a bit then cut into strips, DS generally yums it up!

Top tips so far - don't waste time making fancy food especially for your child, even if you do have a snazzy new Kenwood food processor - the more effort you put in, the less likely he is to eat it (grr!).

The messier/more exotic the food, the more likely the child is to like it (beetroot, blueberries, avocado, mango, asparagus, curry - all hoovered up. Banana, potato, spaghetti carbonara - refused.)

And most importantly - when your child doesn't want any more to eat, don't force them! Just relax, let them dictate their appetite - a healthy child won't let themselves starve!

[SkyeOneDay]

An old shower curtain under a high chair is great when doing BLW, easy to wash down when all the food gets everywhere...

[baileys19]

finger foods and easily blended foods are great starters for the weaning programmes, if you always remember antyhing that dissolves in water is perfect for weaning babies. also pureed fruits and veg to get the taste buds going and its ideal to freeze in small containers or ice cube trays for future use.

[perfectorchid]

Buy a big piece of wipe-able fabric to cover the table. I still use mine and my children are 3 and 2.

[glowgirl]

Always sit your child at the table with the rest of the family they will soon pick up good eating habits.

[snackdahl]

All 4 of ours have been started off on steamed or roasted vegetables, especially the sweeter tasting types such as carrots, parsnips, sweet potatoes, butternut squash and sweetcorn.

Just watch out when changing their nappies!!

[120]

all my weaning recipes are here. The bircher muesli is easy and a huge hit with my lot (DP included).

I'd recommend a four-fold approach to keep as many nutrients in and the amount of faff down. RRSS

Start with RAW (depending what's in season):

grated appled
banana
halved blueberries
ripe pear
avocado

Move to ROASTED

butternut squash
sweet potato
carrots
parsnips

and STEAMED
Broccoli
Peas
Asparagus
Sweetcorn

Finally SHARE your dinner. Let them learn to dip their bread in your soup, take the odd bit of salad, bite into your chicken leg.

Learn to cook with less/no salt, fat and sugar and you will all benefit. They learn by copying you, and how you eat. It is also more fun and relaxed eating together.

I loved the CUSHI TUSH seat for it's smallness and wipeability.

[120]

snack, you snuck in whilst I was typing.. great minds

[ILikeToMoveItMoveIt]

A great baby led weaning food is hard boiled eggs and you can hard-boil an egg in the microwave - no faffing with boiling water etc.

Leave the shell on and put it in the microwave for about 45 seconds. As soon as you hear the shell start to crack take it out of the microwave straight away.

As simple as.

[ILikeToMoveItMoveIt]

Baby rice is pointless and unnecessary. Don't waste your money or your time with it.

Wait until they are 6 months old. Health risks aside iro early weaning, if you wait until they are 6mo you don't have to worry about excluding certain food types (except the groups that are to be excluded until 1yo). It makes weaning a lot easier.

[Rosebud05]

Quinoa flakes were our secret weapon in BLW. Can be used for porridge pancakes or to thicken up soups, casseroles, stewed fruit etc so that BLW-ers can just shovel it in. And they're bursting with nutritents too.

[GoldenSnitch]

No need to buy expensive lidded trays to freeze your purees in - just buy cheap ice cube trays and some large, sandwich style food bags.

Put the puree in the ice-cube tray the into a bag and freeze. Once frozen, empty the cubes out of the tray and store in the bag - freeing up the tray for you to create another batch in.

The trays are much cheaper and by emptying into bags, you can reuse them before the food is eaten meaning you need far fewer trays.

[pipsy76]

Don't be too keen to wean! Wait until your baby is really ready, there is plenty of time for you both to be wearing brown bananna!

[domesticslattern]

Never ever leave weetabix or porridge on the chair and say "I'll sort it out in the evening when I'm back from work". By then it'll be a dried on rock and take 10 times longer to remove.

If they don't like a food don't automatically stop giving it to them, as my DD was very fickle about what she liked/ didn't like from one day to the next.

[MegBusset]

Don't spend weeks stocking your freezer with frozen purees as you may just find your baby is a determined spoon refuser

If this does happen to you, giving toast soldiers, breadsticks or rice cakes with the puree smeared on them is a good way to clear the backlog!

[catz747]

Best tip anyone told me is if you have twins (or more ) use 1 bowl & 1 spoon & shovel it in (baby permitting)!