BABY LED EATING
Baby-led weaning recipes and meal ideas for the whole family
ABOUT BABYLED EATING
Hi! I'm Hannah - Mummy to Joshua (born in January 2017) and now Isabelle (born in June 2019).
As Joshua neared his 6 month birthday we started to think about weaning him onto solids. After reading up on the different options and speaking to friends about their experiences of weaning we decided to take the 'baby-led weaning' approach. This meant giving him solid finger foods for him to pick up and eat himself from the start. No purees, no spoon-feeding, no blending, no mush. (We later followed the same weaning approach with Isabelle too!)
I knew that giving a 6 month old baby food to eat would be a messy, crazy process and I wanted to record how it went so that I could look back at photos of his chubby little face smeared in tomato sauce or his fluffy blond hair coated in yogurt in years to come. Rather than maxing out up my phone memory with photos I decided to set up an instagram page to track his weaning journey, and @baby_led_eating was born.
Joshua picked up eating like an absolute pro. From the very start he shoveled everything we gave him into his mouth at an alarming speed. He seemed to know what to do with food straight away and he hardly ever just played with his food or dropped it on the floor.
I've always loved cooking and trying out new recipes so, as his appetite and our confidence grew, I started trying out new baby-friendly recipe ideas on him and I sharing all my recipe ideas, along with method photos, on my instagram account.
​
I soon realised that there was was whole global instagram community of people posting photos of their baby's meals, sharing their recipe ideas and generally supporting each other throughout the whole fun, messy and sometimes nerve-wracking process. As I gained more followers people kept suggesting that I collate all my recipes into one place.
So this is it.
A collection of the many recipes and food ideas I have tried out with Joshua.
All recipes are aimed babies from 6 months old up.
They all tend to be low in salt, low in sugar and packed with extra vegetables where-ever possible.
They are generally soft in texture for little gums, but firm enough to be held by little hands.
All recipes are vegetarian or pescatarian, but can be easily adapted to include more or different ingredients.
Freezer-stocks are key to quick, simple and healthy homemade meals so the vast majority freeze and defrost well.
​
I am not a professional chef or nutritionist and I often cook 'by eye' without measuring ingredients. But maybe, I hope, some of these recipes will give you some ideas of tasty, healthy, baby and toddler-friendly foods to feed your little ones and yourselves.
Enjoy!
​
