Any homemade Stage 3 recipes?

We make spaghetti bolognese & almost any other type of pasta meal into baby food. I just give it a quick blitz in the food processer so it breaks up into smallish pieces rather than a puree. Actually I make lots of things into baby dinners just by giving it a bit of a blitz in the food processor & maybe leaving some bits of meat or veg out as finger foods - roast dinners, steak & veg etc
I also bought some risoni pasta which is pasta but really small like rice. I cook that up & chuck in a tin of tuna, some cooked peas, a tin of savoury chopped tomatoes & sprinkle some grated cheese on it & Matt seem to love that. He also likes fish fingers & potato pom poms or hash browns, especially now he's got the hang of dipping them in tomato sauce. And for some reason he adores cooked peas as finger food - he can't get enough of them!

Stage one is just starting out on solids,..really smooth/thin puree,...blue tins or jars! Thats what we still up to! Stage 2 is still puree but with lumps and bumps!

When Briona was this age I got a kumara, boiled, mashed and froze it in ice cube trays, and made it the base of any of our meals that weren't competely ok for her to eat (e.g. rice), and sometimes she had it just on it's own.

I find stage 3 so very easy. We usually have 2-3 veg and a meat for dinner, so any of the veges can get mashed (pumpkin, kumara, potato, brocoli, cabbage if it's soft, peas but my girls don't like them until they're 2, etc), soft pasta can even be chopped or mashed easily. Meats = finely chopped chicken beef or lamb, gravy is all good and helpful for mixing, a small amount of mince not in lumps.

You can also make up two nights at a time (just make it up with what you're eating, and put the second one in the fridge/freezer) which is helpful for those nights when you have takeaways or chilli

Regarding allergies, my nephew has all the above as well so when he comes round i make mini meat balls for the littlies.

Any ground meat will do.  into a bowl, i use for 500gms of meat, 3/4 cup of rolled oats, a sprinkling of herbs and seasonings, i cut an onion up really really small and add about 6 tablespoons of tomato puree. then roll into tiny balls, 

If i make a double batch i free some into bags,  normally we have these either in a chinese soup.  

beef stock in a pan with a bit of garlic, soy sauce, a tiny tiny bit of chilli sauce (1/2 tsp) i throw in sprouts, vermacelli, bok choy at the end and my kids like eating meat ball soup.

You can turn the recipe into mini patties and have mini burgers. or put them on kebabs with roast veges.

or use in spag bol.  home made lasagne, I buy mountain bread from sureslim as it is dairy, egg etc free and use the sheets in place of pasta.  layer them with mince and top with a spagetti sauce.

hope these help

Shouldn't have any problems with them unless there are allergies in the family - ie wheat, dairy products in there.

Maya still doesn't eat a lot of meat. I worry about her iron,but she seems to have plenty of energy.

When she was 10 or so months I used to boil rice with finely chopped silverbeet for Maya, she would make a real mess with it but the iron from the silverbeet that leeches into the boiling water is then reabsorbed back into the rice

Amy, if I remember I'll bring the allergy kit that I got for the gremlins, it has some more recipes and info about which foods are higher risk than others.

Yep, rice is fine. Baby rice is basically just normal rice ground up and that is usually bubs first food. As long as he is coping with lumpier foods he should cope with rice fine.

I can't get Maya to eat silverbeet now, she loved it as a wee bub tho.

This was the age that Olivia started being quite particular about trusting food and was HUGE on flavour.
My advice would be to cook up veges or meals that you want them to have, so maybe a tender beef casserole with carrots and mashed spud. Cut or mash it into teeny bits and give it to bubbah on their tray.
Kid's get to that stage where they need to start trusting their own instincts on what is good to eat, so feeling food with their fingers is a great way of supporting them doing that.
For the first couple of times they are going to throw it about but they soon get the idea and more and more goes in as time gets on.

I also started adding fried onions, stock and herbs into foods for Olivia as well which was great, I remember a girl off my EBB Mummy board let her little girl have a taste of some of her Butter Chicken and she loved it.
My pediatrician also recommended that I did this at this time as well, her words of wisdom were "Other countries have a completely different first foods system and they are not wrong, just different. They are also thriving countries". She is a French chicky and I know they offer a lot of dairy and other things much earlier.
I actually started Olivia on table food at around 10.5 months or so altogether as it seemed completely pointless making 2 different meals when she really wanted to eat with us and eat what we were eating (Olivia and her seagulling while you are eating is a bit distracting!).

As for recipes. If you wanted to remain O-naturalle. I would say stick to your basics. Crock pot/casserole bake meats till tender, add a small amount of stock and cornflour as well as your usual veges (or mixed veges) then move on to what texture they like. I liked introducing Olivia to mashed tater as well, she wont eat it off a spoon but shovels it in with her fingers. Roast pumpkin... any roast veges really? Asparagus . Speaking of mixed veges, do up a handful in the microwave in a bowl of water for a couple of minutes then give to bubbah. Olivia LOVES peas - go peas! Also I got into the tinned fruit and started chopping it up into bits. I can't really get Olivia raw fruit as she is a bit refluxy on higher acid fruits so this is great because it is stewed a little in the juices.
I think a lot of the basic type food you can snazz up by throwing in together: apricot chicken, apple - kumera mince casserole... It would work well for those kids who have special intolerances and allergies as well. I would say though, make sure you check your corn flour is gluten free and drop the stocks... try frying up veges (onion, carrot, potato - get them caramalized in butter) instead and using that as a flavour.
Baked beans and spaghetti for those nights/days you don't feel like being Mrs Cook it.
Olivia started having dairy for lunch now, either a yogurt or custard. I started her out on those Petit Miam 6+ month ones then moved onto regular and custard. Custard is just a couple of tablespoons in a bowl mixed with milk and a minuscule amount of sugar or fruit juice from your tinned fruit... even real stewed fruit if you want to go there?! Nuke for 30 secs and stir then another 30 secs... just till you see it cooking, it isn't one of those creations you can really walk away from.
I posted a chart on snack foods a while ago if anyone was interested:


Last time I posted it I had a lot of people say "I have that!" Well I don't care LOL! I am not saving it on my photobucket for people that have it, it is for the people that don't have it!
The food with biro crosses beside it are not recommended in high frequency as they contain large amounts of sugar.

Well after that marathon post... any questions!?

i used to go by the finger food chart in my baby food and beyond book...loved that book... i'm sure mine had frozen peas in it tho ... and funnily enough the boys both love to eat frozen peas fresh out of the freezer but wont eat them cooked.

gabriel was very much into feeling his food and playing with it but i think in the long run it helped him a lot.

Oh no Toni, that sucks!

We are at the stage where Tyrell will either put his hands in his mouth or take the spoon....I think I might just chop up some food and place it on his tray and see how he goes with that.....man it is hard to know what to do!