11 month old wont eat lumpy foods

[newlon]

Hi, this is only my second posting on BW and I have been doing some reading but am looking for advice on a particular issue. My 11 month old has become very fussy with food. He will happily eat anything that is puree and loves finger foods but won't eat anything remotely textured or lumpy.
I try to home cook as much as I can so that I can offer finger foods for meals but having recently returned to work I find that I am using jar foods during the week a lot more. He doesn't seem to mind the jars, in fact I think he prefers some of them to my cooking but he is stuck on stage 1 jars.

Does anyone have any advice on how to get him to eat the next stage foods or what I can do to get him to eat more variety?

Thank you

[~inbalance~]

I think now is a good age to start incorporating more finger foods instead of lumpy purees.  Lumps eaten off a spoon aren't very appealing and a lot of babies don't know how to handle them off a spoon but do better if they're feeding themselves.  Maybe try focusing on offering a larger variety of finger foods.  You can offer just about anything you cook for the family minus added salt or sugar. 

[emily3434]

I work as an OT specifically with feeding kids -- I'm personally not a big fan of stage 3 foods (purees with chunks) I prefer to go from smooth to table foods.  he will not miss anything if he doesn't eat them.  It just makes life more difficult for you to try and find things to feed him!  how does he do with a stage 1 with a cheerio in it? some kids do better when the mixed texture is more contrasting.  I'd also stick to more finger foods and let him self feed.  good luck!  keep us posted.

[newlon]

Thanks so much for the advice and giving me the reassurance. I have given up on the stage 3 lumpy foods and have been giving him more finger foods. He seems to do really well with the finger foods, though I find it harder to get him to eat as many vegetables but he loves fruit. If I can't give him finger foods cause we are out and about then Im using stage 1 smooth foods and he still happily eats those.

[Lemonthyme]

I've just come up with a new recipe on my blog for fish cakes, they went down well with my 11 month old.  I'll copy and paste the recipe here:

Ingredients

2 potatoes boiled or baked and mashed
Approx 100g of tinned salmon (or other fish, see below)
Soft herbs, chopped (I used a few sprigs of garlic chives and herb fennel but parsley, dill or normal chives would work well)
Wholemeal flour
Unsalted butter
Oil

Method

Heat oven to 200 degrees C.  Mix all of the ingredients (get your hands in).  Form into little balls, slightly smaller than a walnut and squish a little.  Dip into the flour to dust lightly.  Fry each side in the oil and butter and put into a baking dish.  Bake for around 10-15 mins until hot through.

The joy with tinned salmon is that it still contains Omega 3; tuna for some reason doesn't, although you could always use other tinned fish or poached fresh or frozen fish.

http://mamacook.blogspot.com/