I was recently asked for ideas for babies/toddler meals.
Let me just say we are still in the early days, the little sucker who was eating great has taken another weird turn (they do that sometimes) and has about 5 foods he doesn't fuss over.
If you're interested thats meat, peanut butter, apple sauce, yogurt, and Cherrios.
Also, if you haven't read the Baby Led Weaning book I suggest doing that. I finally got out of a Facebook BLW group because so many people in it hadn't read the book and it was a little nutty in there.
I know this is a blog and I'm telling you don't get all your info from blogs.
So today it's zero how-to and just a few meal ideas I've found that I like!
To start BLW gives a few portions guides for adults and older children for each meal:
veggies & fruits 5 (3 veg & 2 fruit)
grains & starchy veggies 2-3
meat, fish, & other protein rich food - 1
dairy and calcium rich foods like hummus or sardines - 1
healthy fats - 1/4 portion
Babies aren't going to stick to those guidelines, but it's good to offer from each. The author mentioned that babies will eat proportionately more protein and fats than adults while toddlers will eat larger quantities of carbs.
Still keep in mind that a baby size portion is a baby sized handful.
A friend of mine mentioned that that a baby feeding book she read suggests the following guidelines for meals (I don't have the dinner suggestion because I was just asking about breakfast and lunch, he just eats what we eat for dinner.)
Breakfast - grain, fruit, dairy
Lunch - protein, grain, vegetable, fruit, dairy
Now, because I love Pinterest and this makes it easier to save recipes, here is my Baby Led Weaning board. I thought it would be easier to browse this, as well as see new recipe finds.
Whether you are doing BLW or not there are tons of great BLW recipe blogs that will give you tons of meal ideas.
For myeslf breakfast and lunch are the hardest since he is at the sitter. I really don't want to send anything too messy. For dinner I just strip him down to his diaper and let him go to town on whatever we are eating.
Know this though, they go through eating phases, so don't get discouraged when that happens. Right now we are in the middle of a phase and I think it's due to teething. He also suddenly decided he wants to be fed off of an adult fork.
Go figure.
