need some food ideas

We are having a little trouble with feeding ourselves finger food so while it is offered at every meal, they are still getting spoonfed as well. I need ideas of foods to feed them other than the normal fruits and veggies. They have also had pastina and cereal mixed in and cheerios and ritz crackers crushed and mixed in (not all together) to thicken things up. They have had pastina and cheese and they have had mashed up chicken soup stuff (chicken, celery, carrots, rice, etc.) I need some fresh and new ideas, this is getting very old. Any one have any ideas??

 

Grilled cheese, pasta like the spiral kind of the bow tie, macaroni and cheese, umm trying to think of what the girls eat.

 

beans and rice, vegetable soup, pot pies,
depending on what they have already had, sometimes you can give them whatever you eat minus lots of spices, barring allergies etc and dice into teeny pieces or semi puree for chunky texture. that is all the jarred baby food is. have you looked at the meal ideas at http://wholesomebabyfood.com/babyfingerfood.htm?

I know it seems boring to feed them the same kinds of things over and over again

 

spaghetti with sauce (I just take some sauce out before I season it too much and cut up the spaghetti), waffles with a little butter or whole fruit jam, toast, various soups (if we have homemade soup, I take some out and use the hand held blender thing to make sure the chunks are smaller), mine love diced canned chicken breast (that i cut small) mixed with applesauce served warm...hmmm...let me think some more.

 

We have tried yogurt, refried beans (off of a spoon of course!), pasta, grilled cheese, scrambled eggs once (I dont know if eggs are okay this early though...oops), cheese and that is all I can think of at the moment.

 

You can also try pancakes, boiled potatoes, egg yolks, artichoke hearts, and some other fruits and veggies like yellow squash, zuccini, oranges, kiwi. We also do small pieces of sliced lunch meat, like roast beef, corned beef, turkey. Oh, and this week we cooked butternut squash and mashed it up with a touch of cinnamon.

 

Pieces of tofu?

 

I would try adding more foods that mommy and daddy are eating, as long as they are healthy! I know it was around that time that my babies got kind of tired of the bland babyish foods and wanted more variety, and more flavor.

 

My girls have scrambled eggs and toast every morning and chopped up apples.. They love it. And for lunch and/or dinner, I like to give them chopped meat with broccoli. I just bought a mini blender and I put the broccoli in there, cut it up into little pieces and mix it with the chopped meat. Also, I second the bowtie or spiral pasta with some sauce on it. They love that too. The pastina, for me, got very messy, so I switched to those 2 kinds of pasta instead.

Another thing that I just remembered that works really well for me is using my crock pot. It makes everything you cook in it so easy to either mash or cut up so they can eat whatever you're eating for dinner!

Good luck!