Back to Basics: Portion Sizes

The other day I learnt an interesting fact:

A baby's portion size should be no more than they can hold in their hand.

Oh

My

Goodness!!

No wonder Baby Bean doesn't eat half of what we give her! A serving of meat stir-fry, for example, should be as much rice as she could hold in a cupped hand, a piece of meat the size of her palm, and then a generous hand-sized serving of veg.

Now perhaps this is a fact I should have known; after all, it apparently is true for adults too (oops, I appear to overeat on a thrice-daily basis!!), but it's come as something of a revelation. Bean eats about 4-5 pieces of pasta, for example, which is apparently the correct portion size. I give her 8-10 pieces. One tablespoon of mashed potato she can probably manage - I give her about three, just in case she was in the mood for it and so ate loads! The outcome? She's completely over-faced by the amount of food in front of her, eats very little, starts chucking the excess onto the floor and the whole meal becomes a battle.

The fact of the matter is that I have forgotten the first, most important, rule of Baby Led Weaning - babies can self-regulate their intake.

Look, at 14 months old this was what I put in her bowl (not a healthy meal, but a desperate what-have-we-got-in-the-fridge meal)

And this was what was left:

Sensible girl ate probably the most healthy part of it too! :-)

In my defence, there are the occasional days when she will eat almost everything in the first bowl, but I HAVE to stop serving a portion that size just on the off-chance! So what do I do? I buy new crockery (any excuse). We now have these, Tesco Loves Baby segmented plates.





It's working really well - I put a serving of veg in each triangle and then the carbs/meat/dairy share the larger section. As long as I don't stuff the sections full, the amount of food seems manageable. And hey presto, Bean tucks in!

So it's back to the beginning for us. I'm re-reading my Baby Led Weaning principles and trying to get to grips with those we've let slide. Turns out Rule Number One isn't the only one, but that's another post...

What do you fancy for dinner, darling?

A commonly asked question in households up and down the country, and yet one that was never as tricky to answer as it is now!

Life pre-Bean, I must admit, was mainly fuelled by frozen meals and jarred pasta/Chinese/indian sauces. It wasn't that we couldn't cook; more that after a full day at work we just didn't have the inclination. All we wanted was something quick, easy, and which could cook itself while we relaxed with a cup of tea in front of something relevant like Come Dine With Me (!).

Now, however, there's salt and sugar content to think of, and proper nutrition. In other words, there's a reason to cook. So cook I do, despite the fact that each day I've probably done more work whilst at home than I ever did in my paid job!

 A family favourite from my childhood - chicken, mushroom & pineapple with rice.

Of course cooking in itself is only one part of the equation. There's the shopping that goes with it. Suddenly I need to understand how to cook different vegetables; I need herbs, spices and a host of other "ingredients" in the house, and I need to remember to use things within  a few days (we currently have some very soft, green-ish used-to-be-potatoes lurking in our vegetable hopper). And yet despite the culinary world that has now opened up to us, the answer to this age-old question of what to eat is still:

"Don't know really. We've not got much in."

It's rarely true; there's usually plenty in! But it's usually things to make pasta with as that is Bean's (and mine, to be honest) preferred meal. But Bean's Daddy insists that we need more variety than tomato & beef pasta one day and creamy chicken pasta the next. Shame really.

No, our big problem now is that Bean doesn't eat most of the things that make up our diet! She's not a fan of cereal (even the infamous Rice Krispies are being eschewed at present), nor bread; rice she struggles with, she eats very little meat and has to be in the mood for cheese. And this is what she does to sandwiches:

So...... Our meal options are generally as follows:

• Breakfast - fruit & yoghurt, scrambled egg and ham, onion or cinnamon & raisin bagel with cream cheese (1 small piece), and sometimes a few spoons of unsuitable sugared cereal.

 

• Lunch - wraps (nibbles a bit and then UNwraps), any of the above breakfast options or below dinner options, sometimes a sandwich (usually if we're out), plus snack things.

 

• Dinner - pasta, mild curry, peas, sweetcorn, broccoli, fish/fish fingers/fish cakes, chips, pizza-type things, salads, prawn crackers, garlic & naan breads. Then yoghurt, fruit, rice pudding etc for dessert.

Doesn't look too bad written down, but it's not even enough for a different option a day and, as she gets bored of having something all the time and so starts rejecting it, our options narrow. As of today, however, Bean discovered dipping (by stealing Mummy's ketchup :-0 ):

...so humus and crudities will be going on the to-be-tried list :-)

So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to give me ideas! (Please!!!) Write them as comments below and between us we should get some great menus going.

IT'S A MIRACLE!!!

I think Baby Bean must have taken pity on me after my last few posts bewailing the mess. Because tonight something amazing happened...

THERE WAS NO MESS! :-)

And I don't mean she just dropped a little bit; or the splashes only reached her eyebrows instead of the hairline; or she only flung her spoon onto the table instead of the adjoining room.

No. I. Mean. There. Was. No. Mess.

Zero.

Zilch.

Nada.

16months old today and look!

This is at the end of the meal!! Don't believe me? She's eating an ice cream cone, so that would be dessert, yes? (Actually, it's Daddy's dessert, but she nicked it, so now it's Bean's dessert! I believe that's how it works with children?)

But look! See that shiny clean floor, and that shiny clean tray, and that shiny clean baby? Maybe you think dinnertime consisted of air? Nope - wedges, cauliflower, sweetcorn, pizza and yoghurt. She ate almost all and what she didn't want she calmly handed over to us.

It's unbelievable! I'd say I'm speechless, but I'm clearly not. Instead I am rambling. :-)

So, the moral of my amazing story? Have faith. One day your baby too will eat all their tea in a polite and clean way. It might only happen that one time (I'll let you know on that score) and it may come after eating next to nothing for breakfast and lunch (yep, she's a one-meal baby this week), but it WILL happen.

YAY!