What sort of meals do you make for yourself? Can you offer those or adapt them slightly? I mostly made our normal meals but kept things chunky so DS could pick them up (either with fingers or fork). So for a stew I cut veggies bigger than I normally would and when I served up I could pick out the larger pieces for DS - and because he liked to recognise what was on his plate I served his up in little piles (carrots, aubergine, courgette, pepper etc) rather than a bowl of mixed stew, and didn't leave too much of the gravy on his plate. He loved veggies made in a stew but wouldn't have eaten it mixed or with a spoon. I did the same with curry, put out little piles of meat, veg, lentils, and served with chapati or naan bread - only the lentils needed a spoon really.
Otherwise things like fish/meat with potatoes and steamed veggies are easy to pick up. Roasted root veggies with meat/fish. Pasta with chunky roasted vegetable sauce or with a simple dressing and steamed veggies and/or salad as a side.
Mine never liked mushy or mixed foods so I stopped making things like soups, fish pie, shepherds pie - the sort of things that have mashed potato on top, mixed ingredients underneath and needed a spoon (although many LOs also pick up fist fulls of mashed potato). He didn't eat soup until he was almost 3yo and even now it is not a favourite. It depends what you like to cook and what your LO likes to eat really.
I would introduce a spoon but not expect it to be used proficiently. It's quite hard to use a spoon correctly because of the way the wrist has to move. There are some finger food ideas here
Finger Foods (6 months+)
