"Advanced" Baby Food

[SeattleRain]

My little guy is 8.5 months old and I'm looking to start him on more "advanced" solids. He really enjoys eating solids and eats a variety of different fruit and veg purees, mostly Earth's Best or Ella's Kitchen or Happy Baby brand. Around 6 months I started him on whole milk greek yogurt (about 2 T at breakfast) and he sometimes gets oatmeal with his purees. He hasn't been exposed to too much meat because we keep kosher and can't buy the Earth's Best meat dinners, and I'm thinking he needs to start getting some more protein. He seems "hungrier" and I'd like to give him a healthy appetite for more "normal" foods like the kind of food we eat all the time. I've been trying to simply put chunks of chicken BLW-style on his tray but he seems confused and frustrated by them. He also has absolutely no teeth and seems to prefer pureed foods. Does anyone have any advice/recipes for heatier, more protein heavy foods while still in some form of puree?

Our restrictions are no shellfish, no pork products, and no meat and milk combinations. Daniel eats gluten and dairy.

[whozeyermamma]

Since we are vegetarian, I'll be making all of DS's "protein" foods.

Red lentils - just cook them with water until they are super mushy.

white beans - get the dried kind - canned have too much salt.

quinoa; a grain with tons of protein; cook it till it's super mushy too.

tofu - steam and then cut into chunks or puree it - good with a veggie like broccoli.

with everything but the tofu - I'll be making a decent sized batch - putting the puree into ice cube trays and then freezing it for single-serve portions.

I'll start with purees and then eventually I'll just pull out the ingredients we use for meals - say if I'm making black bean tacos, I'll take some of the beans and rice and either just mush it up - or give it to him whole depending on how old he is. My DS is 8 1/5 mo too but he seems to have a senstive tummy so I'm going to hold off on proteins for a little while longer. Good luck!!!

[asraidevin]

A baby food grinder will remove the outer casing of beans. Or you can just offer beans as finger food.

With my son we just feed what we are eating just mashed, chopped small and soft cooked or whatnot. Much easier than making something for just him.

[whozeyermamma]

Oh yes - the baby food grinder is great - I like it for when I'm just smushing up our regular table food -for purees I use a food mill.

[Parker'smommy]

What is the difference between a food mill and a baby food grinder?

[BirthIsAwesome]

Get a baby food grinder ($9.95 here) and run some beef or chicken through it. Or beans/lentils like others have suggested.

[LittleBirdy]

Sort of off topic but DS eats a lot of Earth's Best fruit/veg purees... be glad you're kosher... the meat ones taste like vomit!  I fed him "chicken and sweet potato dinner" last weekend.  I will not be feeding him any more of those!

[SeattleRain]

Really? They always look so yummy! I'm sort of happy to hear they suck because now I don't feel so bad. I tried to feed him one of the 3rd stage foods today (Spring veggies and pasta) and he had a really hard time with the pasta texture. I just don't know how to get him past that super pureed texture that he seems to enjoy so much.

[LittleBirdy]

I think the fruit and veggie ones are very tasty... banana mango?  YUM!  But the chicken & sweet potato dinner did not taste like either of those two things.  Not even close.  I think that's what is really motivating me to make my own baby food from now on.

[whozeyermamma]

This is a food mill:

http://www.amazon.com/Mirro-Foley-2-Quart-Stainless-Steel/dp/tags-on-product/B000LNUM8Q

This is almost exactly like the one I have. You cut up the food, steam it and then put it thru the food mill! (We also use the food mill for tomatoes for sauce.)

Like one large sweet potato will make a whole ice cube tray of 1 oz. servings of sweet potatoes.

If he likes the puree I wouldn't worry about it for now ... he'll be ready for something chunkier soon ...

[MJB]

My daughter (third child) will be 8 mos. in another couple days. She doesn't have any teeth yet.

Today she ate:

1 peach Yobaby yogurt with 3 TBSP brown rice cereal

1 homemade waffle, cut into 4 strips

~20 oyster crackers

~6 oz. (the size of our glass bowls) of chicken (baked and cut into small pieces), peas, and butter

chicken and greens

veggie puffs at my big kids' soccer practice

That was actually not as much as usual because we were pretty much out of the house all day. So she had breakfast at 8am, crackers for a snack around 2, "lunch" at 5 and dinner at 8.

I would just keep offering him regular table foods, he'll get the hang of it. I'd say the only thing I've found that my girl absolutely can't manage is asparagus. 

Have you tried scrambled eggs? My baby loves them. I've even set her on the floor with a plate of eggs and a piece of toast so I can eat my breakfast in peace. 

[tzs]

hey!!! another kosher mama out there....good to see you!

we did more blw the whole time but we started out with "easy" meats at 6 months.

ground beef or turkey or bison if you can get it is great....meatloaf, meatballs, meatsauce for pasta...whatever....

dd loved beans at that age too and they were great for practicing pincer grasp. i always added some sort of coating to them to make them yummier and to add fat (a vinagrette...a salsa....some jarred indian whatever that we had around....whatever i felt like.) or refried...it's easy to do your own and you can add good fats.

chicken soup meat is really tender although mine never went so much for the texture and still doesn't so i think it's just her. i think alot of mamas around here pull out the shabbos soup meat for their kiddos even if they are still on mush. maybe some sort of jewish baby rite of passage? i dunno....

chopped liver or a pate type thing is great.

cholent meat or any other crock pot meat is super easy (plus..if it's cholent then i always think she's going to take a super long nap...i know i do.)

i avoid tofu because of the soy thing but i don;t think a little would hurt anyone.

my kid loves loves loves eggs....any way she can get them...especially egg salad which i think is kinda gross but whatever

anything with peanut butter. i like to do peanut noodles (with scrambled egg too!) since she loves pasta and when i give her PB as a spread she would always kind of play with it.

all the dairy stuff...yogurt, cheese, cottage cheese (or yogurt in smoothies, cottage cheese added to mashed potatoes or pasta...)

we do tuna and canned salmon....making patties out of it is good (add breadcrumbs, egg, maybe mayo, mustard, spices....then fry up...)

we like real oatmeal and you can do all sorts of add-ins (canned pumpkin, cranberries, figs, berries, banana....)

he might be jonesing for fats too so avocado would be great and i try to add in as much olive oil as i can to dd's foods.

we have always been pretty toothless but it's amazing what they can gum up...just keep offering and one day he might give it a shot!

[tzs]

oh and duh....forgot hummus! or better yet, falafel with hummus!!

[SeattleRain]

Originally Posted by MJB 

My daughter (third child) will be 8 mos. in another couple days. She doesn't have any teeth yet.

Today she ate:

1 peach Yobaby yogurt with 3 TBSP brown rice cereal

1 homemade waffle, cut into 4 strips

~20 oyster crackers

~6 oz. (the size of our glass bowls) of chicken (baked and cut into small pieces), peas, and butter

chicken and greens

veggie puffs at my big kids' soccer practice

That was actually not as much as usual because we were pretty much out of the house all day. So she had breakfast at 8am, crackers for a snack around 2, "lunch" at 5 and dinner at 8.

I would just keep offering him regular table foods, he'll get the hang of it. I'd say the only thing I've found that my girl absolutely can't manage is asparagus. 

Have you tried scrambled eggs? My baby loves them. I've even set her on the floor with a plate of eggs and a piece of toast so I can eat my breakfast in peace. 

So I tried scrambled eggs on Sunday and he didn't seem to know what to do with it. I gave it to him for breakfast. I fed him the little bits and he nibbled them off my finger because he didn't seem to be very good at picking them up. Then I gave him a bottle before he took a nap and when he woke up and yawned, I pretty much saw every scrambled egg piece I gave him stored up in his little cheeks. That's so much food your little one is eating! Maybe I'm not feeding my little guy enough. He gets probably half that much, if that.

Originally Posted by tzs 

hey!!! another kosher mama out there....good to see you!

we did more blw the whole time but we started out with "easy" meats at 6 months.

ground beef or turkey or bison if you can get it is great....meatloaf, meatballs, meatsauce for pasta...whatever....

dd loved beans at that age too and they were great for practicing pincer grasp. i always added some sort of coating to them to make them yummier and to add fat (a vinagrette...a salsa....some jarred indian whatever that we had around....whatever i felt like.) or refried...it's easy to do your own and you can add good fats.

chicken soup meat is really tender although mine never went so much for the texture and still doesn't so i think it's just her. i think alot of mamas around here pull out the shabbos soup meat for their kiddos even if they are still on mush. maybe some sort of jewish baby rite of passage? i dunno....

chopped liver or a pate type thing is great.

cholent meat or any other crock pot meat is super easy (plus..if it's cholent then i always think she's going to take a super long nap...i know i do.)

i avoid tofu because of the soy thing but i don;t think a little would hurt anyone.

my kid loves loves loves eggs....any way she can get them...especially egg salad which i think is kinda gross but whatever

anything with peanut butter. i like to do peanut noodles (with scrambled egg too!) since she loves pasta and when i give her PB as a spread she would always kind of play with it.

all the dairy stuff...yogurt, cheese, cottage cheese (or yogurt in smoothies, cottage cheese added to mashed potatoes or pasta...)

we do tuna and canned salmon....making patties out of it is good (add breadcrumbs, egg, maybe mayo, mustard, spices....then fry up...)

we like real oatmeal and you can do all sorts of add-ins (canned pumpkin, cranberries, figs, berries, banana....)

he might be jonesing for fats too so avocado would be great and i try to add in as much olive oil as i can to dd's foods.

we have always been pretty toothless but it's amazing what they can gum up...just keep offering and one day he might give it a shot!

Wow, awesome suggestions (hello other kosher mama!). I've definitely tried chicken soup before, I even made him a whole pot of chicken and veggie soup and PUREED it and he still was a little weirded out. Maybe it was the barley in it (I like barley over luckshen, I know, it's weird), I don't know. I think this week I'm going to try the soup chicken again. Also, I have a lot of chicken stock in the freezer, maybe I'll use it to simmer some sweet potatoes for puree so he gets a little more protein. I really like your suggestion of adding more fat, and I like the suggestion of canned salmon and tuna. I eat a lot of canned salmon for lunch so it would be really easy to pull some of that out for him. He's never had fish!

I'm making something with ground meet for Shabbos this week so I'm going to pull some out and try that. I never tried feeding him ground meat but it's a good idea. I just introduced him to tomato sauce (via the Carrot-Tomato EB blend) so worse comes to worse, I can try pureeing it if he doesn't dig the texture. I'm going to try meatballs also, and I think I'll do something with chickpeas for lunch so I can introduce him to those.
 

[expat-mama]

I made a couple of meat purees and my DS loved them! I'm not sure he digests the meat so well though, so we've put a hold on them. Anyway, if your LO can digest it well here's what I did-

Soaked then boiled a bunch of lentils, then added chunks of chicken and carrot to the pot and a bay leaf and a bit of cumin. Let it all cook together then tossed it in the food processor and made it mashy (not exactly puree, a bit chunkier). It was GOOD. I actually ate some of it with a bit of salt for myself!

I also made a chicken, apple and carrot chunky puree. Just cooked the carrots and apples down and added chunks of chicken- I added cinnamon to this one. Into the food processor and done! It was pretty good too- cinnamon was a bit weird for me with chicken, but DS really liked it!

Edited by expat-mama - 3/17/11 at 2:39am

[tzs]

geez, i keep randomly thinking of things, probably b/c i'm trying to vary it more with us too.

so there's always that veggie chopped liver stuff that people make too. i think it's made with eggs, no? but i've also had a vegetarian pate made with walnuts (somehow) that was really good. that stuff is super smooshy and i think it has veggies in it too....like eggplant maybe?

[MamatobabyA]

Have you tried avacados with your LO?  My little guy loved em.  They are easily squished up, but they have enough texture to practice self feeding.  Plus they have lots of good stuff in em.  Beans are also a big hit around here.

[MamitaM]

We're going to start solids soon and I'm not to sure about how to do it. My ped is pushing the cereal and I'm not interested in that,even mixed with my milk. The papers she and the nurse gave me say beans shouldn't be introduced until around 8 months or so.Has anyone noticed problems when their babes had beans or tofu early, like at 6 months?

[tzs]

oh oh oh.....how about bean chili with melty cheese on top (or meat and bean chili....but i choose melty cheese over the meat any day.) that was one of dd's favorite foods as a beginner.

and no, we never had a problem with beans. i mean, I personally would be feeling that "special fruit" feeling but i never noticed anything with dd, but she also never had problems with gas.