"People" food

[Danielle9608]

Over the last couple of days Averi finally seemed to get the hang of feeding herself and now is eating more "people food" then baby food. This is great because she is becoming more independent now but I am at a loss for good food to give her. We just started giving her meat and slowly adding in some diary. So far all she has had is cheese. I would like to send her to daycare with real people food too. It just been so easy for so long to pick some baby food off the shelf and heat it up since they are so many flavors. Would you mind sharing some of your sample menus for your babies. Dinner time is hard for us. I don't get home with Averi until 5 and Jon is home until 5:30 - 6:00 which makes eating dinner as a family almost impossible. So her dinner need to be quick or prepared the night before.

[ikkin510]

Baby food companies do make little microwave meals for kids. Soups, raviolis, etc. Those would probably be easy to send to day care for her.

[uptowngirl]

Hannah eats what we do, and has pretty much right from the start. Today was scrambled eggs, strawberries and grapes for breakfast - and a few bites of greek yogurt until she smeared it in her hair. :doh: Lunch will be a cold bean/pasta salad (rotini, green beans, kidney beans, parmesan) and dinner will be grilled chicken and pepper kabobs. I do a lot of different combos of pasta/beans - another favorite is a black bean salad with avocado and roasted red pepper and corn.

http://wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com/ has a lot of good recipe ideas too!

[saltyveruca]

What are you eating? As long as it's not full of sugar or salt, generally she can eat what you eat. Obviously avoid shellfish, honey, and nuts, and stuff that's a choking hazard. But you'd be surprised what they can eat. Finn eats STEAK, as long as the pieces are small enough! Just pick out Averi-appropriate leftovers and send them on, that's my best recommendation.

I made Finn some meatballs that were a big hit with him. You can freeze or refrigerate them. Lean ground beef plus frozen spinach (lots of iron!) and shredded cheese. I did peas and carrots in this first batch, I won't do that again. My mom suggested adding an egg to keep it together better but you want them to be a bit crumbly so they break down into baby size pieces. That's the only thing I really make special for him. Although they are good so we eat them too!

I'd like to say we feed Finn a lot of fresh stuff, but a lot of it is frozen fruits and vegetables. He really likes frozen peas!

Perhaps the best food discovery we made was oatmeal. He loves oatmeal. Just the plain stuff from the big canisters. We don't add any sugar, salt, or butter for him, just water and oatmeal and usually whatever fresh fruit we have for our salads (blueberry or strawberry). He freaks out over that! I am sure you could send that for daycare easily, they just need to add water and microwave for like a minute.

I also like to make him scrambled eggs. After 9 months they are generally ready for them, and Finn gobbles them up!! Although I am lazy about it and just microwave them. This probably would be something you'd feed her at home instead of sending to the daycare, though.

Yogurt is also good, we do that with fresh or frozen fruit. Just do plain yogurt, full fat if you can find it. Just be warned, if she spits up with the yogurt...it will be the grossest smell that's ever escaped her body. Trust me.

Little pieces of shredded or grilled chicken are good. Usually we just take off pieces of whatever we are eating. Leftovers are awesome for this! You could send little bits of chicken with some frozen peas and carrots that will probably defrost by lunch.

Finn is also a big fan of bananas. It is the messiest thing to feed him...but he loves it and can pick it up himself. He gets mad if I try to spoon feed him bananas!

We haven't done this a lot, but you could also send pastas, cut up into little pieces she can pick up. They make the whole grain fortified ones, that's what we usually eat. If I remember to separate them, Finn will eat it plain with no sauce and love it. But he enjoys the sauce too. :p Although I don't make a habit of it because of salt and sugar-and I don't think his tummy does well with tomato.

If all else fails, we will give him bread. Usually as a failsafe in case he rejects what we made him, or if he wants to eat but we're not ready yet. Plenty of great whole grain options out there. I think all bread is fortified. I toast it, rip it into strips and hand it to him. Just watch out and make sure there's no added sugar or honey. Especially the honey.

On the go, I like to give him freeze dried fruit. Target has some, Walmart does pretty often, too. Strawberries have been the best for us. Just watch out and try them yourself first, some of the brands are kind of hard (like Walmart's pineapple).

A word of warning on people food, though. This may not be a problem for you, but it is for us. Once grandparents and other family know you're feeding "real" food, it opens a floodgate. They get so excited about him eating what we're eating that they want him to eat all sorts of crazy stuff. MIL tries to feed Finn fries all. the. time. Any time we get together for a family dinner, one aunt or another is telling me he can have so and so dish that I'm not feeding him (usually a high sodium casserole or processed sausage or something). And I have to fight off ice cream and other desserts frequently! "Aww, let him have that brownie!!" (That is not just a brownie, but a brownie with nuts on top, lol) They are always trying to get us to give him juice, etc. Sometimes I let it slide (it's not like he eats ice cream every day) but often I feel like the food police, out to squash everyone's dreams of feeding Finn. Haha. Anyway, it's easy to feed him well on your own because you probably know what healthy is, but it may be a struggle when other people are involved. So just be warned!

[FFC]

Lately, I give Katie bread and a fruit for breakfast (I use whole wheat bread and break it up for her), she snacks on some puffs for lunch, and dinner is whatever I'm eating + bread, crackers or a fruit/veggie medley. If I'm eating pasta, I make sure to get all the sauce/seasonings off (I suck it off lol), then cut it up for her. Usually I'm eating something soft enough to feed her and she's doing great with it.

Today for breakfast she's having prunes and cheerios. She's plugged up :(

I don't plan on giving her meat, and I haven't decided on dairy yet.

[flyerso6]

Some of the things we have tried are:

Wheat Pancakes and fresh fruit (their favorite)! Spaghetti (very messy but also a fav), mac n cheese (not as a whole meal though), small pieces of chicken, manwhich, small pieces of hamburger, peas, carrots, toast, mashed potatoes (also a huge mess).

They usually just eat some of what we are having, but that doesn't always happen since we sometimes eat after they go to bed or sometimes have food I don't want them to have yet like pizza. I am trying to get DH to cook them food instead of using jar food. I was thinking grilled cheese, more frozen vegetables, chicken.

For fruit I have found that buying the containers of pre cut mixed fresh fruit is the best. The times I have bought actual individual fruits most of it goes to waste. I can buy a small container of strawberries, pinapple, grapes, blueberries, catelope, etc, for about $4.

And I am also telling people NO don't give them that, NO they can't have that! I don't know what it is with people wanting to feed babies everything, no wonder obesity is a problem in this country.

[Danielle9608]

Last night we had our first real family dinner together. I know, it can't happen that way every night because of our schedules but it was nice for one night. Jon got out of work early and I picked up a cooked chicken at the store, otherwise we never would have been sitting down to eat together at a reasonable time.

Averi ate pieces of chicken, green beans and mashed potatoes. And water from her sippy cup.