My 10 month old son is starting to really enjoy feeding himself. Last night he had tortellini and he just loved it (sauce everywhere:hair, eye, ear, nose) and had to have a bath right after!
My husband and I are stuck on what kinds of foods to give him/ make him for dinner. Right now, we make grilled cheese, tortellini, spaghetti, and chicken&dumplings for him.
Any other ideas, things that are healthy and easy and about the size for him to self-feed?

Thanks,
Kristin

soft cooked veggies like peas (which you can mash to be extra safe) or green beans

mashed potatoes (which are a lot of fun to get out of hair, from behind ears and in between baby fingers)

My son is 10mths, too!

Most night now he is getting whatever we eat: soups, stews, meat and taters and veg (with the meat ripped into small pieces). On the nights he doesn't get our food, in case we think it inappropriate (like when we get subs for dinner or something), we give him the jarred toddler food.

Since we generally feed him his dinner, his lunch is when he gets the most finger food action. I generally make him little cracker sandwiches with the following filling: roasted red pepper dip (he LOVES that!), cream cheese, hummous and baba ghanouj - we get the dips at the grocers. He also eats those Heinz toddler cookies and cheerios for snacks and Farley's biscuits for breakfast.

I also give him cubes of cheese, ripped up pancakes, low salt whole wheat crackers (the breton style ones), hunks of apple and banana and various cooked veggies (green beans, cauliflower, broccoli).

My LC said it would be fine to give him homemade cookies and spice breads, so I've been making pumpkin based spiced bread and cookies.

I used to nanny for babies and now i'm about 8 weeks away from having my own. Check out Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron. It's sweet. Lots of recipes for finger foods (like healthy chicken nuggets) and crafts and general good things. I don't like to be in the kitchen, but this book helped me out A LOT when i was nannying and i'm looking forward to getting one for myself soon.

What perfect timing! My daughter Eleanor is about to turn 10 months as well and is super interested in finger foods. I get a little concerned with her choking on something- so I'm never really sure of what to give her. Last night I gave her some lo mein noodles and she gobbled them up like they were going to get away from her if she didn't eat them fast enough! She gets annoyed with jarred baby food now. Any more ideas on what is makes for good finger foods? Eleanor doesn't have any teeth yet but she does a good job at gumming things.

My kids are all passed that age, not by much, but a little.
A few tips just from gagging children...spaghetti is an all time favorite, you just have to make sure you get all the noodles to be pretty short. I thought I had gotten them all done, but I missed one. And he gagged. he didn't choke, but it was very scarry.
Other major choking hazards-grapes, hard melon pieces, hot dogs (cutting them inot little pieces helps, but to be totally safe, peel them, so vienna sausages are really good).
I had seen on a couple other parenting boards a thing that looks like a big teething ring, but the top had like a piece of mesh cloth over it, where you could put a piece of fruit in. Then the baby chews and sucks and just tiny bits work out. Choking isn't a concern and they get to try something yummy and new.
Also, as soon as I had my babies try 'real' food, they didn't want a thing to do with jar food.
I think my favorite to give them would be any kind of pudding or mixed veggies. My oldest would pick out all the lima beans and make a tiny pile on her tray. So cute!
My second child did choke on baby cookies. Everyone said that they were totally safe for babies. That baby would get just the outside of the cookie mushy and suck it off. My son did that for about 5 minutes, and he sunk his little teeth in and snapped off the end and choked hard, very hard. It seemed like forever trying to get it out.
One other thing that my kids loved was tuna fish salads and sandwiches. Toast and grape jelly cut into squares.
And always when trying new foods, since they are already through jarred foods, then you just have to be careful about the highly allergic foods like peanut products, strawberries, tomatoes. Same rule as jar food, one a week to try out and monitor for reactions.
This is such a fun time! Ok, anytime they do anything new, it is so incredibly cool. My niece blew a rasberry today, I was thrilled!
I hope I contributed a little help!

Melinda

Thanks for all the ideas!!!
I'm going to look into that book, too. I feel pretty lost about the whole feeding thing in general.

Off topic: Owen decided last night that *walking* was his favorite mode of transportation (he had been taking a few steps here and there for abnout 3 weeks) and was walking all over the living room!!! I'm such a proud mama!!!!

Thanks everyone!
Kristin

There's a book by Annabel Karmel, an English mother and trained chef/nutritionist. Her books are available here and are very good.

Another good tip - The Italians make baby pasta. If you have an Italian grocer or deli nearby, try and find a box. It comes in very small pieces in different shapes and sizes. Think miniature spaghetti-o's.

this may not be the official word on what's safe, but what worked for me was to give my son food that was too big to get into his mouth, so he was forced to take a bite, which always was the right size. on rare occasion it might make him cough a little in surprise, but he never gagged. Steamed carrot sticks, long green beans, big banana chunks... but ALWAYS under supervision; i would never walk away and leave him alone with big solid food.

The Ruth Yaron book is great, but SO disorganized! i wish her editor had done a better job on the indexes- i have the 2nd "revised" edition- the separate recipe index is not alphabetized, and some things that are alphabetized are done so under a cutesy name she's given them rather than an obvious key word. She also cracked me up by often telling you what not to do in each recipe, over and over. "Do not cook this"-- i don't know about you, but when i follow a recipe, i only do what is written and don't need to be told not to do something that isn't there-- sorry for the rant. but i quit using it for babyfood because i got so annoyed.
However, it does contain lots of great nutritional informaton and fun craft recipes too. I would recommend it, but it could have been 2/3 smaller and much easier to use.

One key thing about choking hazards that I'd glossed over ... until one of my then-18-month-old daycare "classmates" choked one day!

Be VERY careful about sticky foods -- K's classmate choked on a piece of a sticky granola bar, for god's sake ... he didn't chew it enough and it lodged at the top of his windpipe. The Heimlich manuever didn't do anything, but luckily the caregiver in the room swept his mouth with her finger and managed to dislodge it.

Another word of wisdom from a friend of mine with about a 10-month'er at the time: be careful about wet leaves tracked into the house. Her daughter found one on the floor, put it in her mouth, and it kinda stuck to the roof of her mouth even as the back part was choking her. When my friend first swept her mouth, she didn't even feel it. OH, and be aware that when a little one is choking, they're likely to fight you rather than understand that you're trying to help them.

Thank the gods I haven't had any really serious choking episodes between my two boys, because I'm not the most attentive mom to these sorts of things. I guess they have good guardian angels.

L