[Greenmomma]

DS is SO OVER baby food, he wants to self feed. ONLY. He has 6 teeth and is good at gumming.

He needs things that are not mushy or too slippery to grip. I am having brain paralysis and can't come up with any good ideas!

 

[gloobella]

I fed/feed my daughter canned fruit and canned veggies. They are nice and soft so they are easy to chew. Also they come already cut up into small piece that saves me a lot of work.
She loved bagel crisps too. One of her favorites and all the other babies I know is veggie booty or pirates booty. It is a natural corn puff type snack. I get it at safeway or traders joes. When I first had it I thought it tasted like styrofoam but all the babies love it and now I eat it too. I can't remember what else I gave her. Hope this helps.

 

[babygrant]

I found the trick to keeping veggies and fruit not so slippery was coating them in stuff. With veggies I would cook them and roll them in nutritional yeast so that my little guy could hold them. With fruits I would roll it in wheat germ. Worked wonders for me! My son's favorite food was avacado cubes rolled in nutritional yeast

 

[CorasMama]

My DD's first finger food was firm tofu (not silken, the other kind). I just cubed it up and put it on her tray. She still loves tofu to this day!

Also, you can try polenta. You can fry it, which just firms it up, so when you cut it up into pieces, they stay in 1 piece all the way to his mouth, or leave it cold, which will have almost as good an effect, and then cube it.

You can do the same thing with cream of wheat. Cook it thick, then refrigerate to congeal, and either serve cold or cut into strips and fry.

Cubed cooked potatoes work best with a less starchy, more waxy potato like a yukon gold.

Lima beans are great, and other large beans (like fava, I think, but I still can't eat/order/cook them w/out thinking of "Silence of the Lambs"). Cook them enough and they mush in the gums, but maintain their structural integrity in the hand, between plate and mouth.

Seriously overcooked pasta.

 

[VikingKvinna]

My DD loved/loves lentils and other beans..black, pinto, whatever. Brown rice is good, too -- when it's cold, it sticks together and is easier to get a clump to her mouth. But even the individual grains go over well. You could do this with any grain -- millet, quinoa, etc.

Frozen peas, thawed (or still frozen when the baby's a little older).

hard-boiled or scrambled egg yolk (no whites until after 1 year).

Small cubes or pieces of cheese, if you do dairy.

You might also want to try putting soft foods on a spoon and giving your DC the spoon to try feeding with that. That's what we did for months with our DD -- we'd refill the spoon and she'd use it herself, then hand it back for another refill. This is good for apple/pearsauce, yogurt, mashed squash and sweet potatoes, etc. Of course DD never scrupled about using her fingers for that sort of thing, too -- a thick enough mixture and it's finger food, ykwim?

HTH!