26th July 2006
Funnily enough we haven't given her that much pasta yet, principally because I like it with a tomato-based sauce and she isn't supposed to be eating tomatoes yet. Also it does sometimes cross my mind that we are overloading her with gluten (what with the Organix Moon Biscuits and the constant rounds of toast) so if we're not eating pasta I'm certainly not making it specially.
I read somewhere that Farfalle and Fusilli are good for babies to hold onto, so that's what we have in the cupboard at the moment. She likes it with pesto, parmesan and asparagus, that sort of thing…
Update 4 March 2007
Nine months on from my first post and I am killing myself laughing about my po-faced 'we're not eating much pasta'… Babybear would now eat it morning, noon and night if I let her. We mostly stuck to Fusilli as the Farfalle were a bit gaggy to begin with (although she's fine with it now, obviously). I really want to recommend Conchiglie though, because the sauce gets stuck inside the shell so it becomes a dinky little parcel of veggie, carb and protein. We rarely have spaghetti as both Babybear and her
father find it irritating, but the conchiglie are perfect for a spag blog.
Babybear eats A Lot of the three Ps, pesto, peas and pasta. It's our never-fail meal, to be honest. Sometimes I'll stir in some cream, creme fraiche or soft cheese if there is some in the fridge. Sometimes I'll whack in some fried bacon as well. Oh yes, we know how to live round our house, let me tell you…
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Farfalle (bows) I think are easy for babes to pick up. I have recently started giving my LO pasta shells stuffed with bolognese sauce (I use no salt, one oxo cube in the cauldron and lots of grated carrot) pop a bit of grated cheese on top and voila!
Rachel! i didn't realise you'd posted that tip on here, i read it when you posted it elsewhere. it's fabulous.
and apparently i'm wrong about the tomatoes thing, so god knows where i've picked that up…
anyway, Babybear LOVED her spaghetti bolognese tucked into pasta shells, so thank you.
although i confess we didn't cook ours in a cauldron, just a conventional pot i'm afraid. ou cauldron was busy cooking up an elixir of youth for me, but i seem to have got the recipe wrong yet again…
Was wondering about pesto – given that it has pine nuts and often cashew nuts in if from a jar, is that ok on the seeds/nuts allergy thing?
Hum, not sure. Pine nuts are a member of the pine family, along with juniper. Cashews are a member of the cashew family (what?), along with pistachio and mango. I don't know whether this makes them treenuts or not. What a helpful post by me!
Aha, having watched a repeat of “QI” last night, I can inform you that pine nuts are in fact not a nut at all, but a seed. Having said that I'm not sure of the allergy situation with 'seeds' of any variety. I've been stuffing notsotall with lots of seedy grainy bread (and pesto) for many weeks, but then she doesn't appear to be in any way an allergicky baby.
Other 'Not Nuts But Seeds' contenders are brazils, cashews, pistachios, erm… can't remember others.
Confusingly the peanut isn't a nut either, but a Pea you see, but it IS one of the biggest contenders on the allergy front.
So I don't think that comment has helped clarify things at all, has it?
Have done a bit of research and can find little that's conclusive…maybe I should just feed her some pesto outside my GP's, then can rush in brandishing baby if necessary.
Munch loves pesto, I fed it to her when she was about a week into BLW and then freaked out cos I had forgotten it had nuts in (or seeds, or peas…!)
Its actually the only thing she'll eat on pasta now, everything else gets waved from side to side until all the sauce has splattered all over me nefore she will eat the pasta….
And red seems to be her favourite…she'll tolerate green but has massive tantrums if I nick some red pesto pasta off her tray.
ps. there arent any allergies in my family, so if you have any, ignore this!
i can't find anything useful either. why don't you post it in the allergies section of mumsnet? or i can do it for you if you prefer?
the FSA says this, for example. Useless:
“Can a person with a nut allergy eat pine nuts?
Pine nuts (sometimes called pine kernels) are not botanically classified as nuts, but there have been some reports of allergy to pine nuts, particularly in people who are allergic to a number of different types of nuts.
So its a good idea to avoid pine nuts if you know that you are allergic to nuts, unless you have eaten them before without any problems. Dont forget to watch out for foods made with pine nuts, such as pesto (although pesto can also be made with nuts).”
Here's a recipe for Red Pesto without pine nuts; it uses feta cheese and tomatoes, so hopefully your bubbas aren't allergic to those!
Red Pesto
I might have to try this, I'm not a big fan of normal pesto and I lurve feta… I'll let you know what Weeble thinks, if I can persuade him to eat anything other than bananas and broccoli!
That looks yummy.
Think the sensible thing to do if you're an allergic type is to avoid feeding them all nuts/seeds until they're 3 as you would peanuts. I didn't realise that you could feed them peanuts at 6 months if they're not high risk, though.
Aah, pasta, peas and pesto….that's our never fail, yesterday Munch was very miserable with an ear infection but she managed a huge bowl of this!
I must admit to adding in some soya beans as well as she thinks they are peas….(cue evil mummy laugh)
funnily enough, i managed to get hold of my first-ever bag of soya beans the other day and made the mistake of using them just like peas and not cooking them. (Normally that's how I get the pasta and pesto to cool down, see?)
Anyway, raw soya beans are pretty yuck it turns out. Had some cooked one later and they were brilliant.
dizzybaby love love loves pasta in any shape with any sauce yum yum yum. she especially loves ravioli. also, in the pasta family although made of potato obviously..she ADORES gnocci (spelling?!) with green pesto. anyone else tried gnocci as baby food? ideal shape size and consistency.
Gnocchi! Brilliant!
Why have I never thought of that before?
Rushes off to plan next week's menus & add gnocchi to shopping list.
Yes LittleE adores Gnocchi with any sort of pasta/ tomato sauce on it, and a liberal sprinkling of grated cheese
How funny – I was wondering whether to post and recommend gnocchi to people only yesterday, after dd polished off all the gnocchi on her plate and ignored the rest of her dinner as always! I buy baby gnocchi from Waitrose – not baby in that it's designed for babies, but baby in that it's a bit smaller than normal gnocchi, and comes in 3 colours for aesthetic pleasantry!
I put fake soft cheese (fake because she's milk intolerant, but feel free to use the real stuff yourself) onto it, which melts and cools it nicely.
No doubt I should recommend putting peas in too to get Aitch to try it.
fake cheese? which 1, the only 1 i can find is scheezly and it smells absolutely vile, far too strong and reminds me of sweaty feet
before we knew josh was milk intolerant he loved things like cheese on toast, now he cant have them unless i can hold my nose long enough to put this scheezly on it lol, so far ive not been brave enough.
OOh, I'll have to look for those, we just buy the regular ones, DS loves them!
Oh yes Cheezly, lovely stuff. Actually I do use the mozzarella one occasionally, but I really do miss cheese since we had to give it up, even though I wasn't a big fan to begin with! The soft cheese that I use for this is called Tofutti – I use the plain one, but it comes in the usual garlic/herb combos too. I get it from Holland and Barrett – all their branches seem to stock it in the chiller cabinet. It's pretty nondescript, but at least it has the same texture as philly – dd likes it with jam or with grated carrot in sandwiches.
do you think it's 'healthier' than Philly? i keep meaning to buy tofu because i know it's so damned good for you but i'm going to have to accept soon that i don't like it unless it's drowned by a bowlful of fiery Thai soup. so that's not particularly baby-friendly.
The Sausage loves tofu. All I did was stir fry with veg so the tofu was a bit crunchy on the outside. Then to Mummy's portion added soy/fish sauce/lime juice/chillies!!! Yummy.
hmm, my holland and barrett dont sell it, they dont even have a chiller cabinet that i can remember lol. ah well, gives me an excuse to go shopping a bit further out where theres a bigger shop :)
i'm going to have to try it… will get some today, tara. and will sort out photos tonight.
Having just double checked the ingredients, definitely not. It contains partially hydrogenated oils, sugar, guar gum and a whole load of other crap that would put me off buying it if it wasn't the only soft cheesy type thing that I've found.