For the past couple of weeks Elspeth and I have been making our way through The flavour-led Weaning Cookbook. It is a great collection of recipes designed to get your baby eating as many different flavours and herbs and spices as possible so that they have a broad palate and to try to reduce the chance they become fussy eaters.
The book takes you through in stages. The first stage is split into three phases, the first being simple purées, moving quickly on to mixed purées and finally mixed purées with spices and flavours. Each phase has a helpful chart with a week or two's worth of suggested meal plans to make life really easy.
Stage 2 starts getting more exciting, with recipes like "creamy green spaghetti" (a huge hit with Elspeth) "orange, date and saffron rice pudding" and then the slightly questionable "cod with vanilla sauce" which we weren't brave enough to try.
Stage 3 has lots of great finger foods; "date and cinnamon eggy bread" and "dill fish fingers" definitely good enough to share with your baby, and then some great meal ideas too, including lots of baby friendly curries.
We haven't made it on to stage 4 yet as Elspeth is still too little, but it looks like we have lots of good things to come. There is a great selection of meals suitable from 12 months, but that will be good for the whole family, so you can get back to cooking a one-suits-all meal at dinner time.
The book also has lots of useful tips throughout, like when to transition from two meals to three, when to start using a sippy cup, when to cut down milk feeds and portion sizes.
For me though, one of the best bits is that there is an index chart at the back listing herbs and spices that help with different ailments and which recipes contain them. The spiced chewable teething sticks have been a great help recently. Even if you have already started weaning I would recommend it to get your baby eating more "grown up" food.
Fingers crossed for Elspeth growing into an unfussy toddler at teatime!
PWT rating: ♥♥♥♥♥
Published by Ebury Press, The Flavour-led Weaning Cookbook: Easy recipes & meal plans to wean happy, healthy, adventurous eaters