Tag Archives: Messy Foods

Baby-led Weaning Wednesdays: Soup

And we’re back! It seems like everything is getting in the way of my weekly Baby-led Weaning post! We had the Breastfeeding Cafe Carnival for the last two weeks of August and before that there were weeks of planning the Carnival. To be quite honest, my posting is going to get pretty scarce in the near future because I’m going back to school full-time for the first time since Peanut was born. Hopefully I’ll at least keep up with my weekly posts!

With Peanut being a full-blown toddler, I’m feeling a bit more adventurous with foods lately. I’ve shared everything I’ve eaten with her for the last 10+ months, but there were certain foods that I gave her in easy-t0-handle ways or possibly just avoided all together. Now that she’s using utensils and maybe-kind-of-sort-of less messy, I’ve been branching out. So I gave her soup.

Yes, she’s had soup before. In the past I’ve given her just pieces out of the soup or just loaded the spoon and handed it to her. This time I just set a bowl of soup in front of her, gave her a spoon, and let her party!

Here are my tips for your first experience with soup:

Tip #1: Naked! It’s easier to clean a toddler than her clothes. Some people are opposed to naked toddlers—especially at the table. We spend a lot of time with a naked Peanut running around our house, so it’s not horribly unusual for her to be eating dinner naked. Maybe we’ll pay for it in the future when she’s 4 and wants to eat naked when we have guests over? Guess we’ll deal with that as it comes.

Tip #2: Ice! Soup is now an automatic favorite because I can put ice in it. Peanut is a food freak and will scream the whole time I’m cooking because she wants to eat NOW! (yes, she still screams if I cook when she’s not hungry yet) Then I put the food on her plate and put it in the fridge and that’s when the hissy-fits begin. How dare I not give her the food on the plate?!? Awful Mama hiding food from the toddler! I will kill you Mama! Soup is great because I stick an ice cube in, stir, and it’s good to go!

Tip #3: Don’t use the good china. Yeah, as if anyone uses their good stuff with a toddler! We personally took an old fold-up table outside to eat on. You definitely don’t want to use anything that doesn’t wash off easily. Also, since it’s summer time and we have our new lovely patio, we decided to eat outside. Really, nothing even got on the ground, but I’m still happy that we ate outside rather than risking getting red all over the carpet in our kitchen (Yes, we have carpet in our kitchen. Yes, it is awful). Most of it got on Peanut.

Tip #4: Bathe immediately. I figured that washing her off with the hose (no, it’s not as bad as it sounds) would do the trick, but oh no. It might just be that it was a tomato based soup, but that stuff dyed her skin! After hosing her down we let her play around outside for a while and I’m certain that if she was scrubbed in the bath sooner that she wouldn’t have had that reddish hue for the next few days.

All in all, soup was a good experience. It’s nice to give her something and just let her go at it. There’s zero effort for me in the actually food-eating stage so I’m able to sit back and relax—something rare for a parent of a toddler. She certainly had fun with it too. It was kind of hard to fight the urge to clean her up when she was literally rubbing it all over herself, but I just kept telling myself that she would just get messy again so it would be wasted effort. We’re not big soup people around here, but I think I’ll probably make it more often now.

Baby-led Weaning Wednesdays: Mashed Potatoes

***I just realized (after months of giving Peanut homemade mashed potatoes) that mashed potatoes have uncooked milk in them, therefore shouldn’t be given to babies under one year (I think?). So maybe find a milk alternative to put in the mashed potatoes if you’re giving them to little ones? Someone please tell me if I’m wrong.***

Peanut loves mashed potatoes. Love, loooooove, looove, L-O-V-E-S-T-H-E-M!

Do you believe me yet?

Peanut had never really been interested in mashed potatoes, but I decided to test them out with a spoon. She quickly made it understood that I was simply not giving her the spoon fast enough so I just gave her the plate and spoon—hoping that she may load the spoon herself as she does on occasion—and she tried to use the spoon for about 10 seconds, then got frustrated and used her hands. Then she got frustrated with that and picked up the plate and licked it. So here are silly pictures of Peanut loving the heck out of some mashed potatoes.

Goes to show how much preferences can change with baby-led weaners over just a few months, right?

Baby-led Weaning Wednesdays: Spoons

With certain foods, spoons just make sense. Yogurt, ice cream, apple sauce, etc. all work much better with a spoon. For over a month, Peanut has been eating yogurt nearly every day with a spoon. We do it differently than traditional spoon-feeding, but I still control the spoon (she just controls where her mouth goes).

The other day while we were having some yogurt at lunch, it dawned on me that Peanut might be old enough now to handle the spoon herself. We decided to try it out and it was messy, but she used that spoon like it was second nature. I probably could have tried giving it to her sooner.

She did eventually decide to play with the spoon…

And she did eventually decide that biting the spoon was pretty cool…

And she did get very messy…

But it’s really cool that she can use a spoon all by herself now! She makes sure to suck every little bit of yogurt off and she doesn’t wine for more the second she swallows. It’s also really neat that she has the coordination to get the spoon in her mouth with very few misses.

I would suggest that moms with younger babies start trying to give them the spoon to handle themselves earlier. I’m guessing Peanut probably could have done it by herself over a month ago if I would have thought about it. Even if they don’t get it quite yet (as was the case with Peanut when I first tried to let her handle the spoon a few months ago), it’s still a nice learning experience and the only downside is cleanup. Go spoons!

Baby-led Weaning Wednesdays: Navajo Tacos

I have been looking for a good recipe for Navajo tacos since I was pregnant, so when I found one in The Food Nanny cookbook that looked like it could be it, I had to try it out. It. Was. It. OMFG they were so delicious. I ate leftovers for lunch today and was actually happy about it. Surprisingly, Peanut was too.

I love chili—particularly the canned variety. In giving up all of my processed food, that’s one I just haven’t been able to beat. The problem with canned chili (and processed food in general) is that it’s incredibly unhealthy. I’ve actually resorted to midnight chili snacks so that Peanut is asleep. Since she started eating food, she must eat everything I’m eating. She screams bloody murder otherwise. While it’s frequently inconvenient, it’s forced me to live up to my standards for her with myself.

This chili (that goes on the Navajo tacos) tastes really, really close to the same as the canned chili and I know it’s good for us! I used organic beans, hormone-free meat, etc. so I am confident that it is something I’m okay with giving to my Peanut.

Of course, I was worried about it being messy. Oh boy was it messy. If you’re planning on serving chili to your kiddos, don’t put them in their Sunday best—which I would think you would assume anyway.

I was surprised that she was picking up the individual beans and putting them in her mouth. She ate every little piece I gave her! If she were younger and not so pincer-enabled, I probably would have spoon fed individual chunks to her.

She really liked the scones too. We just used Rhodes rolls flattened and fried as the scones. Yet again, this is something that I would have been iffy about giving her in a restaurant for fear of whatever they fry their scones in, but since I did it at home (therefore, I know I used healthy frying oils) I feel great giving it to her!

Here’s the recipe for the chili:

1 (14.5-ounce) can diced [organic] tomatoes, undrained

1 lb [hormone-free, vegetarian-fed] ground beef

1 lb [hormone-free, vegetarian-fed] maple-flavored bulk sausage

1/4 medium [organic] onion

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

1 (46-ounce) can [organic] tomato juice

1 (15-ounce) can [organic] black beans, undrained

1 (15-ounce) can [organic] pinto beans, undrained

1 (16-ounce) can [organic] kidney beans, undrained

3 tablespoons [organic] chili powder

1/4 cup packed [organic dark] brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon cayenne (optional-we didn’t use)

2 teaspoons salt (I didn’t omit this like I normally do because it’s such a small amount for how much chili there is in the end)

1 teaspoon [organic] paprika

Brown beef, sausage, and onion in a large pot over medium heat. Drain the fat. Add the vinegar and cook for 1 minute to reduce the liquid. Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for 1 hour.

And the recipe for the actual Navajo tacos:

1/2 recipe of the chili or 1 (40-ounce) can chili with beans

2 cups canola oil

12 Rhodes rolls (thawed according to package) or 8-ounces of bread dough

Toppings:

[hormone-free] Cheddar cheese

[organic] tomatoes

black olives

[organic] romaine lettuce

[organic] sour cream

salsa

Flatten, stretch, and deep-fry the rolls (on both sides until they’re brown) in the canola oil to make scones. Top with chili and other toppings. Be forwarded that this recipe takes a lot of time (1 hour for chili to simmer and 3-4 hours for dough to rise) so start preparation way ahead of time. Don’t make the same mistake that I did! We ate at 10pm. :-/

Baby-led Weaning Wednesdays: Banana

Warning! Do not try this at home without a change of clothes. Or you could try it naked for that matter, but it’s getting cold outside so we’re going to have to get out of the habit of naked eating.

Bananas are great for baby-led weaning. It’s something easy, quick (to give to them quickly, not quick including clean-up), and Peanut loves them. There are a few tips and tricks we’ve stumbled into.

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The firmer, the better.

Especially in the beginning, bananas are difficult to handle. The Baby-led Weaning book suggests that you peel the banana down a bit, cut off the hanging skin, and give that to the baby. We tried this approach, but Peanut just chomped on the end with the skin on it. So I just try to buy firm bananas, then she can hold on a bit better while eating them.

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Bigger pieces=less waste.

I just take the banana and break it in half for Peanut. We buy organic, so you might need to do thirds for conventionally grown bananas. Once the banana gets to the point that it’s the size of her fist, she usually discards it.

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Be ready for mess.

Yeah, I know, all baby-led weaning foods are messy, but this one really takes the cake. I thought that bananas would be relatively low on the mess scale—they’re white, I eat them without mess, etc. Oh boy was I wrong. Bananas get everywhere and once they’re on there, they’re stuck. I have to rub Peanut’s skin pretty vigorously to get the banana off. Plan on cleaning bits of banana off for the rest of the day.

Random tip: For some reason, everyone wants to bring the washing to the baby. I mean, it’s natural to go wet a paper towel and them bring it to the baby to clean them off. This angers Peanut like no other. I’ve figured out that she’s less upset if I just take her over to the kitchen sink and wash her up there. This might be because we’re doing elimination communication and we wash Peanut’s hands every time after we potty.

http://www.baby-led.com/

Baby-led Weaning Wednesdays: Spaghetti

Spaghetti is fun and messy, but what baby-led weaning food isn’t? I suggest the bare minimum clothing for this food. Peanut tried her spaghetti naked (let me know if you have any awesome bibs to recommend because the traditional under the chin ones just don’t cut it when your baby is putting food on her lap). This is good and bad because cleaning her up was easy, but she peed in the highchair. Yet again, I’m very happy that I bought a highchair with0ut cushions. Another suggestion regarding spaghetti and the highchair would be to clean up immediately after your babe is finished. Of course, spaghetti stains easily. Even with a quick clean up, it still took some effort to avoid permanent staining.

Here are some (kind of old) pictures of Peanut eating spaghetti and meatballs. All home-made by my mother- and father-in-law.

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She was pretty interested in the noodles at first. This was the first time she’d had them sauce or no.

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We cut the meatballs in half so that they would be easier to handle. They broke up pretty quickly—as all ground beef does—but she was okay with it by this time. The first few times she tried ground beef she didn’t like it very much. I think she was just confused about it breaking up.

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As you can see, she got pretty messy with the noodles. They were literally wrapped around her legs. So at very least bring a change of clothes.

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And in the end we have a naked, messy, and very happy baby.