We’re having the easiest cream of potato soup ever invented.
1 Quart cream
1 can corn
1 can carrots
1 can cheddar cheese condensed soup
some quantity of diced potato
a bit of minced garlic
a bit of minced onion
chopped celery
Then I toss in whatever is around. Some chopped bacon or leftover chicken breast…
Simmer until the potato is soft. Ladle out and top with sour cream and croutons.
When Arthur was 4 months old we went on a car trip. Going, I sat in the front while he was in the back. He slept most of the way but whenever he needed a bottle or lost a toy we needed to pull over. Coming back, I sat in the back with him and found it much easier. Mainly because I didn’t have to do the thing where Mommy arrives ass first. (Wasn’t there a comedian who mentioned that? That after she had kids she didn’t think there was any place she arrived facing forward…) It was also easier on me, because I wasn’t trying to stretch to put the bottle back, grab a toy etc.
I’m confused about the feeding stuff myself. Arthur will eat his breakfast on his own usually (Plain toast, been thinking of adding a little of Grandma’s jelly to it. She always cuts the sugar in her recipe, but I’ll just wait a little. and cheerios) lunch is usually fed to him, I’m still using the jarred stuff but want to work at getting him away from it. I have cooked veggies, cooled them and cut them up so their smaller. He does well with that. Small pieces of chicken work good too I’ve found. It’s mainly finding stuff that he can eat on his own without getting it all over.
I also read today that you aren’t supposed to give them whole milk until 1 year. I’ve been giving him a little now and then with his lunch or supper so now I’m somewhat freaking out. He seems fine with it though, and I haven’t completely switched over so I dunno if I should just continue as I have or stop the milk and wait another month (but that seems a little silly to me). It’s so confusing!
We’re having leftover Sherperd’s Pie but I can share the recipe 
Few cups of mashed potatoes
pound of ground beef
medium onion, diced
3 or 4 carrots, chopped
1 can of corn
Club House Sheperd’s pie mix
Brown the meat, drain, toss in carrots and onion and cook until onions are mostly clear. Mix the club house mix with a cup of water and pour over the meat, add can of corn. Boil then turn down heat and let simmer for a couple of minutes. Spread potatoes evenly over meat mixture, pop in 400F (205C) oven for 25 minutes or until potatoes are browned.
When I cook this I only dirty a couple of dishes because I brown the meat in a small roaster, do all the cooking on the stovetop then add the potatoes over and stick in the oven. You can cook it in a frying pan then transfer the meat if that works for you. I usually end up making mashed potatoes before I start the rest, but leftovers are awesome for this as well. Actually this is the recipe on the back of the mix packet, I just use more water (for more of a sauce, otherwise I find it really dry) and added the corn because I didn’t want just carrots. I tried it with peas as well, but it didn’t seem to taste as good to me.
mcms_cricket, about self-feeding: diced cheese is wonderful; canned veggies (no salt added), drained, are great finger foods. Canned fruits, packed in juice, drained and rinsed are good; fresh fruit is good as long as it’s soft (bananas, very ripe pears, peaches, kiwi); frozen fruits that are thawed are good, too; cherries, berries, peaches; they are often much less expensive than fresh. If your baby is teething, give them the frozen fruit while it’s still partially frozen: it’s soothing on sore gums. Frozen pancakes, waffles and french toast (prepared and cooled), cut into strips, nothing on them, are all good.
flutterby, if you’ve been giving your little one whole milk with no trouble, I wouldn’t worry about stopping now.
What’s for dinner? Well, hubby works out of town during the week, and leaves the house about 3PM Monday afternoon, so on Monday morning, I cook about four meals, so he can take food with him; it’s a lot cheaper and healthier than him eating fast food all the time. On Monday, I made chicken parmagiana; spaghetti casserole; beefaroni; chicken rice. Here are the recipes:
Chicken Parmagiana
7 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
3 Tbsp parmesan cheese
6 Tbsp whole wheat flour
1 tsp. oregano
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1 and 1/2 jars no-meat spaghetti sauce
2 C. mozzarella cheese
Preheat oven to 350.
In a shallow bowl, combine parmesan, flour, oregano and garlic powder; dredge chicken pieces in flour mixture, and put on a cookie sheet lined with Reynolds no-stick aluminum foil. Bake for 20 minutes; transfer chicken to casserole dish, pour spaghetti sauce over top, top with mozzarella, bake an additional 10 minutes.
Spaghetti Casserole
2 C Dreamfield’s (low carb) spaghetti noodles
1 jar Ragu Rich and Meaty spaghetti sauce
1/2 jar no-meat spaghetti sauce (remainder from chicken recipe above)
1 C mozzarella cheese
Boil spaghetti noodles as directed; drain and return to pot. Add both sauces and mix well; pour into casserole dish, top with mozzarella and bake at 350 until cheese is melted.
Beefaroni
1 lb. extra lean ground beef
2 C. Dreamfield’s macaroni
1 jar Ragu three-cheese sauce (a yellow cheese sauce)
2 cans seasoned diced tomatoes
Brown ground beef in dutch oven; boil macaroni as directed and drain. Drain ground beef, and add tomatoes and cheese sauce to it. Add pasta to this whole mess, and mix well.
Chicken Rice
5-7 boneless skinless chicken thighs
1 box long grain and wild rice (the kind that comes with a seasoning packet)
1 C quick-cooking brown rice
2 cans cream of chicken soup
1 can chicken broth
2 C frozen peas and carrots or frozen mixed vegetables.
Put chicken thighs and cream of chicken soup in Crock Pot. Cook on low for 2 hours. Add both kinds of rice and seasoning packet, chicken broth, and frozen veggies; cook for an additional 4-6 hours. Add whatever kind of seasonings your family likes.
You can see how these recipes all play into each other. I can cook the Chicken Rice in the Crock Pot while doing several things simultaneously in the oven/on the stove. Cooking this way also means that, during the week, when I’m responsible for everything, I have several dinners in the fridge and ready to go.
Tonight we had the spaghetti.
Tonight we had…breakfast for dinner!
Eggo waffles topped with banana slices, butter, and maple syrup (not the fake stuff, gah!). Served with scrambled eggs. I used to like to have Morningstar Farms non-meat breakfast sausages with it too, but I haven’t bought them lately. (I wonder why not? 
)
Yesterday was BBQ chicken breasts a la crockpot, bagged salad, and whole wheat rolls.
Monday was super-easy quesadillas: reheat the leftover fajita filling from Sunday (recipe below), grate some monteray jack with pepper cheese, and heat together in a large flour tortilla folded in half in a frying pan sprayed with cooking spray. Cook until tortilla is lightly toasted. Served with sour cream* and salsa, and chips with “lazy man’s guacamole” (recipe below again!).
Sunday was the famous fajitas: wrap flour tortillas in foil and heat at ~200. Chop up some onions and peppers (the more colors of peppers, the better!). Cut boneless chicken breasts into cubes. Heat a frying pan with olive oil on medium. Toss the veggies and chicken into the pan. When chicken begins to whiten, sprinkle in cumin, chili powder, and garlic powder to your heart’s content. Serve with the warm tortillas. We had this with a can of Goya black beans simmered about 15 minutes on the stove with seasonings (which made more leftovers, yay). Also, chips, salsa, sour cream*, and “lazy man’s guacamole”. By the guacamole, I mean: I buy frozen, prepeeled avocado halves at Trader Joe’s, defrost them, then mash in a bowl with a potato masher. Add diced fresh tomato chunks and stir. If it’s summer and I have cilantro growing in the herb box, I’ll add that. Otherwise, I’m not gonna buy it. My main philosophy in shopping and cooking is: avoid expensive ingredients and things that go bad before you use them up! Sorry if that makes foodies cringe about my use of dried herbs and so on.
Well, that’s our food story. I hope I didn’t offend anyone with my recipes – MrValley and I are not in the least bit Hispanic, and we just made up these recipes ourselves over the years. 
We do breakfast for dinner a lot!
Scrambled eggs, sausages and hash browns.
Sometimes we make Belgian waffles and top them with whipped cream, fruit, and nuts.
Oooh, Belgian waffles.* Please tell me, how do you make them and be able to sit down and eat as a family? I have a waffle iron, but it requires so much attention for just one waffle that I never use it. I could never figure out how to feed more than one person a waffle and not have some food be cold.
We put the oven on warm and stash the waffles in there until they are all done. We do the same with pancakes. Sometimes we even warm all the plates in there. Parallax’s mom taught him that.
I love breakfast for dinner, and we have it when DangerDad isn’t home–he thinks it’s weird.
We wound up having tuna casserole, great for a cool night when everyone’s tired. I made up my own recipe.
Tuna casserole
1 package noodles
3-4 carrots
1 head broccoli
some frozen corn
some frozen peas
1 can tuna
1 can sliced water chestnuts
1 can cream of mushroom soup (most of it)
milk
topping: french fried onions, or nothing
Cook the noodles and carrots together, and the broccoli too after a few minutes. Drain, mix up with everything else and some salt and pepper in a casserole dish. Top with onions, or not. Let sit in a 350 oven until nice and hot, 15-20 minutes.
Flutterby, I need to learn to make a good shepherd’s pie. I’ll try your version!
My Big Baby Book gave 6 months as an ok time to start whole milk. That seems pretty sensible to me … after all, cows milk has basically the same stuff as human, just all the wrong proportions. So I figured so long as I thought of it as “just another food” rather than actual milk we’d be fine … after all, it’s got to be closer to what she was used to eating than a pureed apple would be!
Tonight we ate Speedy Food (well, not as speedy as last night when we nuked frozen pies )
Tuna Pasta
Boil up pasta for 2 1/2 people
Add a cup of frozen peas and boil some more
Drain and add a small tin of tuna, a sachet of tomato paste and a dollop of cream
Eat!
This was recieved well by the Small Girl … that is because it contained pasta. “Contains Pasta” = "Is Good. More Eat. "
By the way, I have to ask … what are these “Cheerios” of which you all speak? Some sort of cereal?
Yes, Cheerios are cereal; they are little o’s of whole oats; they are perfect first finger foods, because they’re too small to choke on, they dissolve quickly in the mouth, they’re easy to pick up, and they’re very low in sugar.
Breakfast for dinner: my husband also thinks this strange, so if we do it, it’s when he’s not home. I’ll whip up a batch of whole wheat and buckwheat pancakes; a side of bacon and some cinnamon appple sauce, voila, dinner!
Wow, I love all these recipes! I’m going to try a bunch of them. Even Mr. Cricket will eat some of these (and nobody is pickier than my husband). Currently I’m the single mom thing for three days while Mr. Cricket is in Nashville for a conference.This means I don’t have time to cook at all! Plus, right now she’s got a very mild virus which involves liquid coming out of both ends… (it is mild, though. she had a bad case a few weeks ago where she had to stay home from day care)
My current favorite quick meal is this -
Pick up a roasted rotisserie chicken (to save money, I’ll sometimes just buy a raw chicken and cook it earlier in the week), 1 lb. of dry pasta (I use the spiral kind or bow tie) pre-shredded parmesan cheese (not the powdery kind in a shaker, but real shredded stuff in a tub) and a big package of frozen veggies.
Discard the bones and skin and shred the chicken into bits. Start the pasta and about 5 minutes before it’s done, start the veggies in the microwave (I’ve used a peas/corn combo, and a mixed veggies combo [corn, carrots, lima beans, peas], but anything you want to use should work - it’s really good with broccoli but I don’t use it as Mr. Cricket hates it). Drain the pasta and dump into a bowl - add salt, pepper a bit of olive oil and a bit of cheese. Dump in the chicken and mix, then drain the veggies and add them also. Toss with more parmesan. (I use a lot).
It’s quick, easy, and makes great left-overs.
Oh, but is all this stuff safe ? She still has only two teeth - don’t I have to process all this so she doesn’t choke? What IS the standard for small-enough-not-to-cause-choking? Bread and diced cheese seem like they won’t get mushy enough. I know I need to start all this stuff. I am SUCH a wimp. I didn’t even know it was safe to give her cheerios until about two weeks ago. She loves them, though I’m not sure she has quite figured it out yet. If I put them on her high chair tray, she’ll pick them up delicately and put them in her mouth, but if she’s got her pacifier in, she’ll just hold a cheerio in each fist and wave them around. It’s like she doesn’t understand that it’s food (as opposed to Just Another Thing to Put in Her Mouth).
Sigh.
Yeah, I was afraid someone was going to say I should stay in the back seat with the baby - I figured that would be the case.
Oh, and while I don’t really have any recent pictures to post, the baby does have her own blog. There’s a link to her Web site with some old pictures.
I’m new to this thread but I have read it all and I really enjoy all the great input. Like others I tried a few child-oriented message boards but find most of them cheesy or petty or just eye-rolling after a while. Maybe someone will come along who can start us our own message board, that would be great!
I had my first baby in July, he is 4 months now and I love hearing about all your kids at different stages. It is very reassuring and I especially appreciated the sleeping and napping advice. Sometimes it is easy to get caught up in reading all the books and worrying about what he ‘should’ be doing by now, etc, etc.
Love the recipes, too.
I have a question for anyone - when did you all start your kids on a sippy cup? I would like to start as soon as possible, I bought some that say they are for kids 6 months and up but I don’t know how to teach him to drink from it. The reason I want him to start soon is that he just plain refuses a bottle of any kind and I would like him to be able to be fed by other people. The only way he will eat is if milk is dropped in his mouth with a medicine dropper or squirted in from the bottle, he will tolerate a few ounces that way but not a full feeding, and he gets a lot of air that way. I am back at work and currently I have to go back and forth to feed him at his daycare, luckily I only work part time and they are very accomodating for me! But once in a while it would be nice to leave him with someone else without worrying if he is hungry, you know? Plus I think my husband is feeling left out of the feeding experience.
He is starting to be interested in putting everything in his mouth now, but he just plays with things. He won’t latch or suck on a nipple or even a pacifier. Will this make it easier or harder to teach him to drink from a cup? You still have to kind of suck on the sippy cups to make the milk come out. Should I start giving him an empty cup just to play with and put in his mouth so he gets used to it?
Well… if she’s getting all she needs through bottles she may not show a lot of interest in solid food. So for her solid food is just another thing to put in her mouth and not a necessity for life. If you’re really nervous about her choking Gerber makes some great foods for little ones. They are quick and easy dissolve so kids can eat them easily. (Veggie Puffs, Fruit Puffs, Wagon Wheels and Cereal Snackin’ Squares)
Really though… make things tiny or mush them up and take your cues from her… She’ll let you know what she’s ready for. Also - she will gag and cough. You need to learn the normal oopses from the real thing. Babies have an amazing gag reflex so she will probably spit up before too much can happen.
I never even tried making sheperd’s pie until I found the mix at the store. I like the mixes, because with stuff like chili and the pie I don’t seem to get a good mix of spices on my own. We tried it the first time and loved it so much I started to experiment (how I arrived at adding the corn as well) and we’ve pondered putting on cheese on top just to see what it’s like. We have this at least once a month we love it so much
mcms_cricket I find that if you give them toast cut into fours it works good. Don’t put anything on it. Arthur picks it up and tears off little bits, he hasn’t choked yet because the bread (like cheerios) gets soggy and he doesn’t stuff the whole thing in his mouth.
Maybe try to not give her the pacifier while she’s in the high chair? She might connect more with ‘this is where I eat, so this stuff must be food’. I dunno, but it can’t hurt
As to staying in the back seat, you don’t have to, she’ll probably sleep for most of the trip anyway. You just have to be prepared to pull over if she is awake and needs a bottle or drops a toy or whatever else. If you’re not in a hurry and stopping a few times won’t hurt your schedule then don’t worry about it.
Loved your Halloween pix, tanookie; couldn’t get yours to work, JohnT, for some reason? But enjoyed your descriptions as always! Wonderful recipes you guys - gee, I may have to actually COOK something now.
Re: self-feeding - what’s happening at chez fessie is, once I let the twins try to feed themselves, their willingness to accept a spoonful from me went waaaay down. Plus they don’t eat anywhere near as much food as they used to - I was beginning to notice this just before I introduced the Cheerios. But The Books say that babies naturally become more lean at 9-12 months. It freaked me out b/c we went from them eating progressively more of the jarred/fresh foods I was spoonfeeding them, to eating less food overall and a greater proportion of formula. That wasn’t what I expected. Dr. Sears says that formula is still the source of 90% of their calories in the first year & eating is just for practice. So I’ve tried not to sweat it. Sometimes it helps when I set them up with food & walk away to do other things nearby, as opposed to keeping vigil.
The only things they want to feed themselves are the ones they can easily grasp. They don’t like mushy stuff - well, they like it to play with, but it doesn’t seem to get to their mouths. So at most meals I’m feeding them lots of Cheerios & other “puffed baby foods” (I call them all Baby Chow), canned peas, and little bits of those hotdogs for babies. They’ll let me put small pieces of soft food in their mouths, too, like banana, soft cheese, and ripe pear (I use a vegetable peeler to scrape off thin slices & then break them up a little). They’ll try what I’m eating, too, so I’ve given them yogurt and little bits of meat. Some meals I set out mushy stuff too & let them go at it, other meals I control - depends on whether there’s time for a bath afterwards!
There are two kinds of baby spoons I’ve had good luck with - one is shaped like a little sword. My daughter loves this & I just keep using a little spoon to add food to it while she’s holding it in/near her mouth. The other is a spoon with holes in it, so that the food sticks to its surface. My son loves that & I do the same “feed 'em on the run” technique with it.
If you’re paranoid about choking (as I am) - supposedly pieces of soft food the size of a pencil eraser are generally safe. Both of my kids have had choking moments. Just last night my son stuffed a whole Wagon Wheel in his mouth, coughed a couple of times, then threw up. My daughter has done that, too. Neither of them was having trouble breathing, just needed to clear their mouths & throats apparently.
Re: cow’s milk - I’ve read that formula has a better balance of nutrients & whole milk too much protein. But geez - 11 months versus 12? I wonder about that, too - all of a sudden, one more day & everything that wasn’t safe suddenly is? Your approach of introducing it gradually makes sense. Mine have had yogurt, cheese and a little taste of ice cream, with no ill effects.
I make scary shepherd’s pie:
Layer from the bottom up:
pound of browned hamburger
2 cans of corn (drained)
mashed potato
can of spaghettios
layer with american cheese
Bake until cheese melts at 350 - about 15-20 minutes
Self-feeding with bread for the paranoid: spreading the bread with yogurt or applesauce makes it mushy enough for anyone to swallow easily. I too had a choker baby; she could choke on Cheerios or anything else in the vicinity.
Slightly funny story for today: I’m in the process of changing BC pills and had to get some condoms to last us while the hormones figure themselves out. I was about to go off to the corner drugstore when my husband pointed out that my brother runs the place–he’s in training to be a store supervisor and was just transferred there last week. If there is* anything in the whole world *that my brother does not want to see, it’s his sister buying condoms. We had a good time imagining the scene, and I got them at the grocery store–where I had to convince the baby that no, she couldn’t hold them and wave them around.
As requested. 