starting finger foods/snacks - any ideas welcome

[*Becky*]

DD has had a mixture of purees and finger foods but mainly purees. She eats toast and rice cakes. I would like to start doing more of a finger food lunch and just wanted some good foods to start with.

Thanks 

[Lemonthyme]

How's her pincer grip?  Pasta is good if she's managing to do that. 

Please forgive me if this is the wrong kind of dish for her age group, babies vary so much with what kind of things they'll cope with but here is a mini meatloaf recipe which might work (or if it doesn't, try it again when she's older!)  http://mamacook.blogspot.com/2011/08/meatloaf-for-babies-and-toddlers.html

[londonlady]

We've been doing lots of different bits that Sofia's able to cope with really well... I have found that I cannot get away with trying to feed her just a puree, because she wants to feed herself. I often give her the spoon but she's taken to waving it around her head so it's less mess to have a load of finger foods on the tray and then I can feed her some mashed up / pureed food in between. 

This week so far it's been:
Steamed sweet potato sticks
Steamed broccoli spears
baked potato wedges
Crumpets with a teeny bit of jam
We even tried a pancake on pancake day...
bread sticks (she loves these) often dipped in hummous
Fusilli pasta (there's a really curly one, not just the twisted one) with home made pasta sauce (so far tried tomato, and bolognaise) it's messy but she can grip these better than the penne I originally tried!
kiwi fruit wedges
Strawberries
pineapple slices (she sucks and gnaws on these)
and today I made Annabel Karmel's turkey slides, which are like mini burgers / patties which she loved.

She also loves the organix carrot corn crisp finger foods... so they come everywhere with us.


xxx

[zeri]

Hmm, this wasn't too long ago I was doing this with DS, let me see if I can remember!
...avocado, soft cooked yams, slightly steamed pears or apple with a bit of cinnamon, cottage cheese, pan-fried (with a tiny bit of olive oil) zucchini rounds, ripe banana split lengthwise in 3's, really softly cooked whole green beans, flattened peas, homemade pancakes...... really, he was so into food that I just made sure he could grab it easily and that it wasn't crunchy or too large, and he was happy. Messy, but happy.

[Lemonthyme]

Oh roasted sweet potato wedges rock.  Also for some reason I didn't give sliced roast meat to my son when he was this young but I think some slices of roast chicken would have worked really well.

[cuckoochick]

We started with stick shaped food of veggies (steamed broccoli, carrots, courgettes), cheese and toast, finger sandwiches with cream cheese/tuna in, meatballs, tuna croquettes etc.  Then we went on to some grated foods e.g. cheese and smaller pieces of food. C had a pretty good pincer grip from quite early on and loves peas, sweetcorn and blueberries (she still does!!).

Enjoy!

[*Becky*]

oh great - loads of ideas. Thanks - looking forward to trying some of these!

[londonlady]

PS - Lemonthyme - love the meatloaf recipe, am going to give that one a try next week! x

[RachelC]

Great ideas here too
http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=95978.0