Baby Led Weaning and Recipe Ideas

Forgive me for this quick post - it's not strictly about making stuff, although it is about making food and preparing meals for all the family to enjoy. It's also the most amount of making I get to do at the moment so I may as well enjoy it!

Ferne is nearly 9 months old now so we've been weaning for almost 3 months. I'm a big fan of Baby Led Weaning and it worked well for us with Wiss, so that's what I planned to do again this time. However, Ferne has led us and made it clear that sometimes all she wants is to be spoon fed! So I'm taking my cues from her and we've been mixing it up with a bit of both at each meal time.

Even though we've been there and done it before, at the beginning I was a bit stuck with what to offer her that would be nutritious and exciting for her but also appealing to the rest of the family. I stumbled upon this beautiful website My Lovely Little Lunchbox and suddenly my cooking mojo was back again! Have a look at Kayla's recipes and I'm sure you will find something to tempt both you and your little ones. The ricotta dumplings are particularly good.

I'm a lot more relaxed about it all second time around but I am still keen to provide as varied a diet as possible. Our typical western diet is very heavy on wheat and cheese so I am trying to limit these and am making sure we eat a range of grains - rye bread, barley, polenta, quinoa etc. As with all good diets, variety is the key (although Ferne could probably eat avocados all day long!)


I've been struggling though because a lot of the finger food ideas for BLW involve muffins, or things on toast but it seems little Miss is not keen on bread-type food (for the moment at least). She likes saucy food that can be sucked and slurped. To be fair, she has only got 2 bottom teeth so chewing is a bit tricky. So I've had to rethink some of my stand-by recipes, but this week seemed to be particularly successful for us all so I thought I'd share our meal plan:

This week we have enjoyed for lunch:

Spinach Scrambled Eggs and Wholemeal Toast
Braised Lettuce and Peas with Cous Cous
Spinach and Goats Cheese Pancakes
Courgette Polpette with creme fraiche dip

and for dinner:

Jacket Potato with Cheese and Mushrooms
Spaghetti Bolognaise
Barley & Vegetable Soup
Fish Cakes with Parsley Sauce and Brocolli
Tomato Mac 'n' Cheese

Breakfast is usually some kind of baby cereal, porridge or Bircher Museli with chopped fruit to keep her busy while I sort everyone else's out. Puddings are often fruit again - Ferne is practising her pincer movements so loves halved blueberries and quartered strawberries and grapes - and yoghurt. We are coveting the Collective Dairy's amazing flavours and their Straight Up yoghurt is brilliant for little ones as it's only ingredients are milk and pectin.

I hope this has given you some inspiration for your meals, but I'm always grateful for more ideas. Please share any winning recipes from your family's repertoire with me...

Thanks for reading and I'll be back again with some real actual crafting soon! Bye for now :)