I remember feeling a little bewildered when I started my first baby on solid foods. There is a lot of conflicting advice out there for moms – what to feed babies, when to feed them, how often to feed them – basically, you won’t find a solution that will make everyone happy! Here are a few baby-friendly foods that were a big hit in our house – and pretty healthy as well! My kids have all loved feeding themselves, so these foods are perfect for that as well.
- Diced avocado – it’s soft enough for even new eaters to gum, and fantastic nutritionally
- Black beans with grated cheese and diced tomatoes
- Diced bananas
- Grapes – cut in half for smaller grapes, in quarters for larger grapes
- Steamed broccoli
- Yogurt tubes – freeze them to make them less messy, and for added teething relief! We like the Chobani Champions tubes
- Soup – sometimes I give my kids the vegetables out of vegetable soup without the broth, for times when the kids want to feed themselves.
- Diced peaches
On the go with little babies, I like to have pureed food in reusable baby pouches. Here are some of our favorite steamed puree combinations:
- Bananas with blueberries
- Potatoes, spinach, pureed with grated cheddar cheese
- Apples and strawberries
- Potatoes, tomatoes, pureed with grated cheddar or mozzarella cheese
Here are some foods my babies have fed themselves with spoons (yes, very messily) as they have gotten older:
- Applesauce
- Oatmeal
- Soup
- Lasagna (cut up)
- Spaghetti
- Lentils with rice
- Fried rice
I find that my kids LOVE food with spices! My seven-year-old was born in the UK, and the vegetable-based baby foods there all have spices added in. Not surprisingly, they taste much better than the mostly-spice-free American store-bought baby foods!
What baby foods did your kids like best?
MaryAnne is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.
I’m still feeding the twins pureed food with a spoon. I think once they’re pretty steady in a high chair, I’ll present them with some mushy finger food like diced bananas. For now, I love making their purees and am now introducing yogurt.
Mmmm, what a tasty list of baby foods!! I did special meals for my first two kids, but now I have streamlined. They eat the same thing as the rest of us at breakfast and dinner. For lunch, they have homemade yogurt and nutbutter that I make up in bulk and serve to the kids each day while I eat leftovers.
I remember my kids liked lots of applesauce and they still do!
I love your list. One of my kids favorite finger foods (once they were old enough for eggs) was scrambled egg with spinach fried hard like an omelet. I would store the cooked spinach in an ice cube tray in the freezer and mix a cube in with the egg. It is still one of their favorite foods.
Great list! Love when they can just have what everyone else is having but then I miss spicy food!
J loved edamame, string cheese, and deli turkey (which we purchased at Whole Foods to avoid nitrates). We never did the pureed meats, but he had enough teeth by the time we started solids. I’ll try frozen yogurt tubes on future kids.
Anna loves string cheese! I don’t remember my kids eating it much at her age. I need to try edamame – I think she would like it.
I agree they seem to like a little spice. Got some great ideas to try. Thanks.
I used a baby food mill and my kids loved a ripe fresh peach or cantaloupe using that to mush it up.
Baby food mills are great!
same here my kids even as babies LOVED spice in their food :-)