What to Feed 11 Month Old Who Is Eating Solids and Self-feeding Entirely

My son is almost 11 months old. I found frozen veggies a bit harder for my little one to chew if I cooked in microwave. Steaming them worked much better, but is a little more work. Or there is sodium-free canned veggies. They are a little harder to find. Jewel and Dominick have some, but you can find more at Wild Oat or Whole foods I think. I cut up blueberries, which my son loves; broccoli that has a little bit of butter on it, egg yolks, american cheese, chicken, pork, or pretty much anything healthy that we have for dinner.
Good luck!

You could make sure you have left overs from the night before.
Or I have done this but it takes some work you cook up a month of meals or even just a week of meals on the weekend and freeze them. If you can do this it works awesome.
A super easy chicken is bring to a boil a can or two of chicken broth after it comes to a boil put in a dozen boneless/skinless chicken breasts bring it back to a boil and boil for 10 minutes.
Remove from broth and shred with a fork. you can then put it into small freezer bags and freeze. Mashed or boiled potatos can be cooked and froze. and I just saw at Walmart they had vegys in microwave single serve containers perfect they were by the regular vegys. Chicken noodle soup was a favorite of my son. I would take most of the broth out and give him a bowl of the noodles he had no problem picking them up by the handful.
Fishsticks, Taco meat and cheese in a soft tortilla.
Another favorite of my kids was saltine cracker with PBJ on them (this was lunch food of course) or ritz with cheese and bologna.
I hope this helps a little.

Hi M.-

I was, and still am, basically in the same position. My daughter is now 14 mos. and only wants to eat stuff she can feed to herself (which makes it a bit harder). We're working on using a spoon but most of it ends up on her front or lap. We also work and I feed her earlier than we eat our dinner. Sometimes I have leftovers from our dinner the night before but not always. Here are a few things that I have tried:

On Sundays I try to steam (in my rice steamer) baby carrots, broccoli and chicken breasts. Then I have a few things to work with during the week. I also found a website that had some good ideas but again it takes a bit of preplanning. Check out www.wholesomebabyfood.com. I got a great idea on this site under the "finger foods" section. I take won ton wrappers (found in the cooler dept near organic produce at my grocery store) and fill them with different food combinations like broccoli/cheese, chicken/broccoli, mashed potato/cheese, etc. You fold over the wrapper and twist the end after filling it and bake at 350 degrees for 12-15 minutes. They can be made ahead and frozen (prior to baking) as well. My daughter can easily hold on to the twisted end and she absolutely loves them in any combination.

I try to give her really healthy, unprocessed foods as well which limits my options. I'm not always perfect but I try. She likes the Morningstar brand corn dogs (I cut them up into small bites), veggie chicken nuggets and veggies burgers. I also have made super small meatballs from turkey meat and baked them (these are also very easy to freeze and pull out as needed). Lastly, I sometimes make a bit of pasta on Sunday and make either homemade mac & cheese or add a bit of pasta sauce to it during the week. Last night I put a bit of butter and some freshly grated parmesan cheese on it and she gobbled it up. These are all pretty easy options in a hurry.

Hopefully some of these ideas will help. Good luck!
D.

My daughter loves meatballs, I get the natural ones from Trader Joes. She also loves the popcorn shrimp and popcorn fish from Gordon's. I know you do not want to try the Gerber Graduates but for a quick fix we give her the pasta pick ups she loves them. I also buy the chicken fingers from Market day. I give her organic applesauce singles from Trader Joe's and soy yogurt. I give her pirogies and Annies organic pasta dishes. She loves spaghetti.

Hi there! It is a good idea to stay awa from the packaged dinners - they are really high in sodium. Certainly fine from time to time, but not on a regular basis. Here are some things that my son (who just turned two) has enjoyed for his dinners; scrambled eggs with tomato and cheese, any pasta with Ragu sauce (try mixing vegies in too), egg salad, grilled cheese, macaroni & cheese with protein & vegies mixed in, minestrone soup, chicken breast (if you bake it with lemon juice drizzled it's oh so tender), baked or sweet potato with beans or cheese and vegies, grilled shrimp (our son loves this!), white fish. When we ran into a picky patch, we started up some sauces that he could dip in and then he began to eat just about everything again (a little drop of ketchup goes a looong way!). Good luck exploring new foods!

Some things that my boys love:
- salmon burgers (we get them from Costco; they're very convenient and healthy)
- sole: I prepare it by putting 1/4 - 1/2 lb in a pan with 2/3 cup milk, 3 peppercorns, bay leaf and a little parsley; bring to a boil, then cover and simmer for 3 minutes or until fish flakes easily; you can strain the milk and make a cheese sauce to go with it, but the fish is also good as is
- beefy tomato soup: in large saucepan, add 1 qt tomato juice, 3 cups water, 1-2 lbs browned ground beef, 1 envelope onion soup mix, 1/4 tspn chili powder, and 3/4 -1 cup elbow macaroni; bring to a boil; reduce heat, simmer uncovered for 15-20 minutes or until macaroni is tender

In general, I would recommend using a Crockpot to make soups, casseroles, roasts, etc. This is the best way to cook a healthy meal that you can all eat together as a family. One of my favorite Crockpot cookbooks is Fix It and Forget It - it has a wide variety of healthy, easy-to-make recipes.

Hope this helps!

Hope this helps!

We have had a lot of luck with turkey meatballs, beef meatballs and turkey meatloaf. The meatballs you can buy frozen then microwave as many as you want at a time. Also you may try stuffed pasta such as tortellini or ravioli. Also, cut up a grilled cheese sandwich or cheese quesadilla. Mashed potatoes can be popular as well. Good luck.

It is really hard to find easy things that are healthy!! My son is 15 months and for protein, I usually feed him Hillshire Farms deli sliced oven roasted turkey (this is the only flavor of deli meat he will eat) or those cans of Swanson white meat chicken. But that chicken has sooo much sodium in it that I try to limit it. All pre-packaged foods have too much sodium for my liking but I talked with the doctor about it and he said as long as I try to stick with lower sodium choices for everything else not to worry about it too much. I have tried to give him what we are eating and most of the time he is just not interested, at least not in whatever meat we are eating.

For veggies, I get packs of frozen veggies because I can microwave a small amount quickly and they don't have any sodium. He likes frozen peas the best, but I still try to give him other stuff and hope someday he'll eat it.

Good luck!
L.

Try tofu.
Tofu is very healthy and easy to prepare.
Good luck.

M.

We pretty much always gave my son what we were eating. If we didn't eat together he had our leftovers. I would also get Mac and Cheese (usually Annie's or Nature's Way) and then mix in veggies and shredded meat or cubed tofu. I also found this site really helpful for ideas: http://www.wholesometoddlerfood.com/

I occasionally also pick up recipes from Kiwi magazine.

Our 11 month old is also a self feeder. We have had lots of luck with the original veggie burger, cubed tofu, grilled chicken, sliced turkey breast, ground turkey breast, sweet potatoes, peas, avocado, black beans, chick peas, assorted frozen veggies. She loves brown rice and quinoa, although they are pretty messy for her to eat. We really stay away from processed foods and foods with nitrates. Whole foods has excellent selections of sausages, hot dogs and veggie sausages that are pretty tasty. We do try to give her what we eat(especially if we go out) and have been pretty lucky that she loves mexican, indian and most fish (salmon and cod) that we have tried. Lots of times she has our leftovers for lunch the next day. It works pretty well.

Good luck,

M.

Hi M. - I make a lot of things and freeze them. I make baby meatballs (make with ground chicken or ground beef, you can get it hormone-free at Whole Foods already ground up and in small quantities from the meat counter), I bake fish and freeze it in small quantities, we do garden burgers (but most are pretty high in sodium so we don't do this frequently), mini cheese pizzas from Trader Joe's. I try to get creative and do things ahead that will freeze well. Our almost 14 month old is on a strange eating schedule because of his low weight gain (that is why I make a lot of his food so I can put extra "good fat" and calories in it) so he also rarely eats when we do. I also have introduced hormone and nitrate-free lunch meat (you can get this now at most grocery stores I think the brand is Applegate Farms) when I am desperate for a protein for him and he has recently had all my frozen proteins. Oh, he loves firm extra firm Tofu, which is a great protein source. I just buy the chunk of it in the package and cut it into pieces and give it to him plain.

I did some searching for "finger food recipes" a couple months ago and found some nice things that could be frozen. You might want to do an internet search and see what you come up with.