After I shared this post about our experience with baby-led weaning, I received requests for a post all about how Finn preps Rory’s food for the week. Finn was always a big food prep guy, making food every Sunday for us to eat for lunch during the week. But now that Rory is here, I feel like he is cooking more than ever!

He still likes his routine of cooking on Sundays, but he will usually sneak another few hours of cooking in during the week to make sure our fridge is always stocked for our hungry 11-month-old baby girl.

Rory’s Go-To Foods

We try to change things up when we can, so we’re always introducing Rory to new foods, textures, and tastes. But I’ll admit, we get into a bit of a rut and often serve her the same things over and over again. She certainly doesn’t seem to mind. Let’s take a look at the food we often have on hand, that doesn’t necessarily need to be cooked or prepped in advance.

• Full-fat Greek yogurt
• Cheese (mozzarella or swiss)
• Cucumbers (her favorite food, by far!)
• Berries (blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries…she likes them all)
• Bananas
• Cherry tomatoes (quartered)
• Toasted bread (English muffins or whole-wheat toast)
• Cheerios
• Clementines

We try to make sure that we’re always stocked with these foods because they’re easy to add to any meal or snack time.

Meal Prep for Baby Led Weaning

Okay, now onto the foods that Finn makes ahead of time so we can easily warm and serve them up when Rory is ready to eat. We buy a lot of frozen vegetables and potatoes, so we are always stocked and ready to make food for Rory. Yes, we feed her fresh fruit and veggies too, but having a stash of frozen is always a good idea!

Also, just a note, we try our best to watch sodium when it comes to preparing these foods for Rory. We will often add butter or lemon to her veggies and then sprinkle on “baby-friendly” spices including cinnamon, paprika, cardamom, oregano, cumin, nutmeg, etc.

Veggies

After lots of trial and error, Finn has found that the easiest way to make veggies for Rory is to steam them. We tried lots of roasted veggies in the early days, but it can sometimes be difficult to get them to a soft consistency for her to chew. Now, it’s easiest for us to buy steamed veggies. The ones in the bags are great! Just make sure they’re only the veggies, with no sauce or anything else added. He’ll often make steamed green beans, which are her favorite, along with broccoli, butternut squash, and cauliflower.

Potatoes

Rory’s also a fan of carbs (I mean, who isn’t?!) so we serve some sort of starch with many of her meals. Roasted red potatoes are a favorite. Sometimes Finn makes them from scratch and other times we buy frozen roasted potatoes. He’ll often make sweet potato tots from a bag or sweet potato fries.

Pasta

Rory loves her spaghetti and meatballs. We try to either use whole-wheat pasta or pasta that is made with lentils or chickpeas, and we like the brand Banza. Finn will often make a batch for the week and we always have meatballs and sauce ready to go too. In the beginning, we often chose fusilli pasta because it’s pretty easy to grip. Now Rory likes spaghetti too and it’s more fun for her to play with it.

Protein

Okay, so onto the proteins that we prep for Rory. I’m not a big meat eater, so it’s hard for me to help Finn when it comes to prepping most of this. (Although, for some reason, I’m actually pretty good at making fish.)

• Egg Muffins: This is the recipe Finn uses to make egg muffins for breakfast for the week. We’ll make a dozen at a time and we eat them too. He just uses any veggies we have leftover.
• Chicken: We buy fresh chicken breasts weekly and will make them as moist as possible and cut them into pieces.
• Meatballs: We buy all kinds of meatballs because Rory loves them so much…beef, turkey, even veggies ones.
• Veggie Burgers: We also like to prep Dr. Praeger’s veggie burgers. Finn will make a few and then cut them into strips.
• Tilapia: Fish is kinda hard to prep ahead of time, so it’s usually something we make and serve right away for dinner. I love tilapia and I’ll often make it with butter, lemon, and some seasonings at 425 degrees for 10 minutes, flipping halfway.
• Salmon: We try to get in salmon as often as possible to get those healthy fats in Rory’s diet. (In fact, when we order from a restaurant we’ll often get a piece of salmon on the side for Rory.)

How We Store Rory’s Food

Once Finn does all of the meal prep for baby led weaning, we have to store it all in the fridge. We love these little jars because they’re glass and we can easily put them in the microwave to heat them up, fast, at mealtime. We just line up each glass jar on a shelf in the fridge and then we can grab and go! It’s also nice because if we’re going to my mom’s or brother’s house, we can fill up a lunch box with her food and head out.

We also just started using these glass Tupperware with 3 compartments. We’ll often put dinner food in these, so we can just heat the entire thing up for Rory.

It takes Finn a bit of time to get everything set for Rory, but it’s so worth it to not be scrambling at the last minute when it’s dinner time.

I’m so grateful that Finn enjoys cooking and making yummy food for Rory. If it was left to me, I’m not sure what the poor girl would be eating every day.

If you want to read more about our experience with baby led weaning, you can find that post right here. Plus, you’ll find all of the baby gear we use when it comes to food, including her bib, high chair, cups, etc..

Casey