Healthy recipes for a 1 year old baby

Hah!  Plain pasta, plain strained peas or sweet potatoes, rice cereal (plain).  :)

When my sister had kids the doctors said "feed them whatever you eat".  Honey has to be avoided for the first year, and typical allergic-reaction stuff like peanuts should be offered carefully and with much monitoring. (that part should really be done by the parents)  Otherwise, just blend the poop out of whatever is for supper and feed away.

When asked about spicy or strong flavoured foods, the doctors said "Really, whatever you eat.  If you eat spicy, feed em spicy.  If you like lots of garlic, feed them garlicy food.  They will develop thier own preferences and will let you know what they like or don't like."

Her kids are rediculously healthy, and while they have their preferences they are not fussy eaters.  Its awesome watching them try something new... the faces they make sometimes are priceless, but they'll still eat new things.

Hopefully you make healthy choices for your own menu and so have healthy food to offer the child.   Of course, when in doubt, ask mom.  Whatever she has set as the 'norm' should be respected.

Not solid, no.  BLEND!! lol Blend the poop out of the food until it is a soft gooey mess.  We used our immersion blender with a small bowl attachment.  Any food processor will probably do it, and there are specialty baby food blenders available if you feel like shelling out for them.  If you are adept with a knife you can scrape and chop most cooked foods to a near-smooth consistency.

Personally, I have issues with food textures and colours so I would puree the foods separately (carrots, beef, potatoes, etc.)  My sister would just throw them all together.  With things like lasagna or stew the option to separate is not there, but they don't look too bad...

The point is, you should not have to prepare special foods for the kid.  Just process whatever you were going to eat anyway.

You can definitely feed a one year old solid food.  In fact, it's probably the best solution, you put some broccoli flowers on the tray of the high chair, or some peas or some cooked carrots, or whatever you want.  They like to pick up the food themselves.  My granddaughter was nursed and introduced directly to solid foods, just like that, and she enjoyed all kinds of things, squash, fruits, etc.  They also may enjoy pureed stuff, but they can handle soft piece of food before they have teeth.  Not meat of course, but everything else.  There are plenty of sources to find out what foods might cause allergy, and that have to be introduced later - cow's milk, berries, nuts, stuff like that.  But from 6 months they can have soft finger foods. 

I just wanted to reiterate what Charron mentioned about feeding them what you eat.  I think it's best to introduce the smells, flavors, and tastes of what you cook with as soon as they can eat (and Siduri is correct...they can eat soft finger foods at this age).

I don't have any food allergies in my family so my suggestions are based on that premise. I understand it's different for everyone and it's all about what the parent is comfortable with.

That being said...some of the things my kids liked at that age:

-Orzo pasta with butter and shallot salt (depending on amount of teeth and ability you could move up to the next size pasta)

-Sweet potato or butternut squash (mashed, pureed, bite size soft pieces) with a bit of butter and brown sugar

-Egg over medium cut into bite sized pieces (I put a dash of shallot salt on them)

-Avacodo (mashed or little pieces) as she was a little older I would put a dash of white balsamic vinegar, lemon, and salt on it (or in it)

- Any whole grain/whole wheat toasted bread cut into bite size pieces and topped with cream cheese

That's all I can think of at this moment...and of course with anything you puree you can add spinach or other greens to.

Good luck...how fun!!

Yes, bread or crackers spread with cream cheese, or even better, hummus!

What has been said here is right.. I made my own baby food and at a very tender age my kids were eating everything.  I was careful with spices but both of my kids enjoy spicy foods now ...

Good luck to you

Actually you can even feed a one year old meat, and it is a good source of iron. My son is now 13 months but has been eating small pieces of steamed chicken and turkeysince he was about 9-10months. Every baby is different- it is common that babies grow tired of everything pureed and mushy and bland. It's a good idea to offer new textures and foods (all under supervision is key). My son loves cantelope, watermelon, bananas and pears, all cut up in small pieces- he feeds himself. He also eats small crackers (made for toddlers). He eats scrambled eggs, pieces of cheese, mini, waffles, pancakes, toast! Also, Steamed sweet potatoes, carrots and pasta with sauce or chesse! Also one favorite is mashed ripe banana with mashed avocado (lots of great nutrtition). lots of foods may be offered at this point, and most doctors reccomend it as it is crucial for baby!

My son is about to turn 1 and he's been eating solid food (no purees!) since he was 6months old.  He eats and loves everything that we eat.  For that reason we omit salt from the cooking process these days and just add it to our own plates since babies' liver can't process the sodium easily.  We almost never spoon feed him unless it's oatmeal or soup.  He's been eating meat and fish since then too.  The list is too long, it's just everything.

 

The only stuff I don't give him is raw salad and raw hard veggies like carrots, also no honey but we're about ready to give him nuts.

 

You can give your nice eggs, hard boiled, scrambled, even fried.  Hummus on toast, cream cheese on toast, avocado slices, yogurt with berries.

 

One of the easiest things I do is freeze stock (unsalted) in cubes.  When I want to feed him I just boil up a little rice or orzo, throw in a few peas and carrots and mix with the broth.  Loves this stuff. 

 

My friends who do the purees really struggle to get their kids to eat for some reason.  We decided to do baby-led-solids because I can't faff around with pureeing every thing lol and turns out he'll eat anything while my friends are still playing "here comes the airplane" with their 1-yr olds.

My daughter is 16 months now... she went straight from breast milk to solids at about 8 months.

 

We never really determined what we should do or why.  She told us by grabbing the stuff off our plates and gave it a good gumming.  

 

Hard things got spit out onto the floor for the dogs and everything else went down the hatch.   Never did any of that blended food stuff, maybe a quick mash with a fork and temp test but that is about it.

 

Dogs are happy - baby is happy all are healthy.

 

Aha!  A dog is the key to clean up.  Now I wish I had one.  It can get pretty messy around here and people do look at us funny at restaurants when DS makes a mess.  Oh well.

Be very careful of string beans. While they may appear cooked , the string is still dangerous.

 

Years ago......  my mother fed my  sister (she was 1 1/2 - I was 17) a plate of food, she had cut it up and put the items on the plate . While we were eating we saw Sarah starting to choke.....my mother rushed to her aid, but the situation was getting worse, she was turning blue. My mother pulled half of the  yellow wax bean out but the other half was still attached by the string which blocked her airway.

Finally my mother managed to pull it out but it was the scariest thing I ever saw. Just  thinking about it gives me the chills.

 

My mother looked at baby food very differently after that.

 

Petals.

What a nightmare petals!  I love string beans, but cleaning them can be very difficult.  I peel both seams with a veggie peeler and it's a pain.

Actually it's kind of funny as my dogs have never eaten so many veggies... ever.

 

They seem to think that if it falls from the baby it must be good... carrots, cabbage, potatoes, beans, peas, spinach, lettuce, anything at all and it's down the hatch!

 

Dogs seem to be healthier for it - just for clarity they are raw-fed (or natural fed) dogs.

 

Hardest part is keeping the daughter out of the dog-food bowls... which isn't likely as bad as I imagine.

(pro-biotics and all)

My daughter is 14 months and will not eat pureed foods anymore.. She has a mouthful of teeth and wants to eat what we eat.. She is SUCH a good eater. Loves everything. Mashed potatoes is the only food she doesnt like. She LOVES green beans. Eats them straight from the can.. I love having a nonpicky little munchkin!!!!!!!! 

As the mother of 17 children and grandmother of 17, preparing healthy food for a 1 year old baby is easy and will taste 100 times better than baby food purchased out of jars.

 

I strongly recommend that you use a food processor. I like the little ones that cost about $10 because it's easier to clean for jobs like making baby food than the large food processors.

 

Take a little meat that you cooked for your meal then put it in the food processor. A little seasoning on the meat isn't going to hurt the baby. Yes, the baby has taste buds and No, the baby is not going to like food that is bland and tasteless. Grind it up until it's the desired consistency. Add a little gravy to it if you want to keep it from being too dry.

 

Potatoes in the food processor is good with a little margarine, a tiny pinch of salt and a little pinch of black pepper. A little shredded cheese such as very mild cheddar or Italian blend cheese is good, too.

 

Whatever vegetables you cook for your meal, take a spoonful of them, put them in your food processor then grind them up to the desired consistency. A small amount of milk and very mild cheese added will improve the flavor for the baby.

 

Babies absolutely love spaghetti covered with a meat pasta sauce so if you cook some for your meal, feed some to the baby. I actually prefer to use rotini pasta rather than spaghetti pasta. I brown ground beef and pork sausage together, an equal amount of both, then add it to the pasta sauce, then stir the pasta sauce into the cooked & drained rotini pasta.

 

When our granddaughter Kylie was 7 months old, we fed her some rotini pasta with meat sauce and she couldn't get enough. Her mommy (our daughter) was amazed. "I didn't know that she liked spaghetti." 

 

Fruits can be pureed in the food processor, too.  Apples should be cooked until tender. I sweeten them using 100% apple juice from a bottle. A little bit poured over them then throughly combined until the apples are moistened, not swimming. A little pinch of cinnamon will help the flavor. 

 

I don't like adding sugar to any foods that I'm going to serve to a baby because it doesn't take very much to get them "bouncing off the walls" so-to-speak (giving them a burst of energy that you do not want them to have).

 

Honey for an infant is abolutely NO because it can make them quite ill.

 

Here's another tip that most parents do not realize:

 

If you & your husband drink coffee, feel free to let a cupful of plain black coffee (No sweeteners added) get to room temperature then pour it into the babies bottle or sippy cup ... one serving per day of coffee won't hurt the baby a bit.

 

If you hear that coffee is NOT good for a baby, or that it will stunt their growth, do NOT believe what you hear.

 

Yeah, coffee stunts their growth alright ... our 16 year old son, who is our 2nd youngest, has loved drinking coffee ever since he was an infant, is currently 6 feet 7 inches tall and wears a size 16 shoe that has to be special ordered and the scary part is that He's Still Growing!

 

His 17 year old brother, who has drank coffee since he was an infant, is 6 feet 3 inches tall and still growing.

 

Their 14 year old brother, who has drank coffee ever since he was an infant, is 6 feet 2 inches tall and still growing.

 

 

Good Luck!  Have Fun! 

One thing to never give a baby under 1 year old is offal like kidneys, liver, heart etc..... this is very important from an experienced mum. The reason for this is offal contains a high percentage of vitamin A and will give infants brain damage.

 

I am shocked and appalled.  Seasoning, juice, margarine, and coffee.  Now I've heard it all.

Ok, now that I've had a little bit of time to calm down from this upsetting post I can come back and address these issues.  Of course no amount of experience can surpass the knowledge of a mother with 17 children.  I only have one child myself who is now an active toddler and I rely greatly on the advice of my mother when it comes to rearing my child.  But as much as I respect my mother's experience there were things that were ok to do back then that are no longer accepted as ok now.  For example, when I was born my mother's doctor gave her a large dose of estrogen to stop her lactation immediately because he didn't believe that breastfeeding offered any benefit to a baby.  He was also smoking as he administered the shot.  Nowadays we know that large doses of estrogen can lead to cancer, smoking is bad for you, and the benefits of breast milk cannot be ignored or duplicated in any way.

 

So with all due respect to your experience as a mother and grandmother, I firmly believe that when we know better we do better.  I disagree with most of your suggestions and this is why:

 

SALT - Babies need very little salt in their diet.  All foods contain a small amount of salt in their natural state and they receive their entire daily intake of salt through breastmilk. None needs to be added to their diet.  There are many many many articles on line about the dangers of salt to humans of any age, but babies especially because their fragile kidneys cannot process the excess salt effectively.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/treatments/healthy_living/nutrition/healthy_salt.shtml

 

MARGARINE - the war over butter vs. margarine has been going on for ages.  There are pros and cons to both but my choice of butter over margarine has to do with my belief that one should eat foods in their natural state.  I consider margarine to be processed food.  I have done the experiment of leaving a tub of margarine uncovered outside over night only to find that not a single insect has gone near it.  If bugs want nothing to do with it then it's probably not real food and I don't want anything to do with it either.  So butter wins for me. 

 

JUICE - Juice is sugar.  100% fruit juice is sugar.  We visited four different pediatricians in four different clinics before we found the one that was the best fit for our family.  They all were a bit different but they all agreed on this one issue - do not give babies and toddlers juice.  We are even advised not to give our toddler diluted juice either. 

 

CAFFEINE - hmmm, where do I start?  The American Academy of Pediatrics discourages caffeine consumption by children.  Caffeine offers no benefits for babies, none at all.  I strongly disagree that there is any need for stimulant to be given to babies when studies show that it is a diuretic, can impede with the body's absorbtion of calcium and iron and can increase blood pressure and heart rate.  I also will not allow sodas in the house as they also have caffeine in them and many other things as well.  The only time my toddler has any form of caffeine is when he gets a piece of chocolate.  But we rarely have sweets around the house and cookies are not a daily aspect of his diet. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/25/sports/25drink.html?pagewanted=all

 

As a parent, when it comes to your child's health you have to talk the talk and walk the walk.  Since we had our baby our eating habits have taken on an entirely new role of importance.  We choose our foods very carefully, buy the best products we can buy, and set a good example for our son.  Our salt consumption has reduced drastically.  Sugar, junk and fast food was never a huge part of our lives but we did indulge now and then - not much anymore.  Occasionally my husband will sneak a bag of no-salt added potato chips into the house and we'll scarf it down after LO has gone to bed as a late night snack hehe!  But that's about it.

 

So I understand that you might have a world of experience.  But do any of your 17 children listen to what their doctors have to say about giving coffee to a baby?  Because the thought of actually doing it is so far removed from common sense that it is almost comical.  "Hey doc, how much coffee should my 18month old be having every day?"  lol

Wait.  I'm confused.  Are we talking about recipes for feeding babies, or recipes for cooking babies?

 

BDL

I am talking about both bdl.