Feeding my Spanish baby...

So it seems that Spain didn't get the memo about organic, no-additive baby food. I haven't worked out if this is because the Spanish cook all their babies' meals from scratch or if their famous laid back attitude means that they don't lose sleep over feeding their babies bland rubbish from a jar.

At home I pretty much make all of Henry's food from scratch. I use organic pouches of food for when we're out and about but I certainly wasn't going to waste precious luggage allowance bringing a week's worth of baby food, nor was I going to spend precious holiday time in front of the stove when we got here. I didn't lose any sleep over what I'd feed him; we were only going away for a week and living on jars full of crap wouldn't kill him if that was the only option. 

On our first morning we located the baby aisle in the huge supermarket (way bigger than our biggest Tesco Extra). I was so surprised by how little baby food there was. Whilst in England we have shelves full of healthy baby snacks and biscuits, pouches and jars, here there was hardly anything. Anyway, because of Henry's allergies I had to be sure to read all the labels on the back of the jars and I couldn't believe how may additives they contained compared to back home. Most of them still contained salt for a start. Some brands seemed to be worse than others but Carrefour Baby seemed to be the best brand so we bought a few jars for this week.

Who knows what they've done to the ingredients to make them taste of nothing but it's an achievement in itself! I've never tasted anything so bland in my life. Henry didn't seem to care but we've resorted to just letting him eat what we're eating now. Today he had jacket potato, tuna and fresh tomatoes for his lunch and he loved it. Last night when we ate out he had bread dipped in gazpacho and verduras a la plancha (aubergine, peppers, courgette, asparagus, onion and artichoke done on the BBQ). He's enjoying all the gorgeous ripe fruit; melon, mangoes, bananas, kiwi and pineapple, and he even had a sneaky piece of his mummy's Oreo biscuit (cute photo of baby smeared in a black biscuit to come!). For the record, Oreos are pretty much the only vegan/dairy free biscuit available so they have become my favourite for the time being. 

So for anyone travelling to Spain I'd pretty much avoid the jars altogether....that is unless your child likes the taste of air in a purée form. All restaurants are so baby friendly that they don't mind a bit of mess on the floor when you leave and they always have plenty of things that your baby will love. We are off for a long walk along the beach tonight and a tasty stop at our favourite Italian for supper. 

Not like the tasty paellas we've tasted before!! Probably just as much salt...

Couldn't go wrong with chicken and rice...shame it was only 10% chicken! 

A happy little face before his lunch earlier today. He much preferred the tasty Spanish tuna fish.