I am reading all this and just wondering if you can feed all this to a 7 month old baby? Should you not keep dairy away until 1 year? I am not sure, but if you say I can go ahead then today she will taste some dairy.

it's completely up to you, Esther. If you have allergies in your immediate family then you could be cautious and introduce foods as per the weaning schedules on the right hand side of the page. But lots of people stick to some bits and not others.

Personally, we don't really have any difficulties in the allergy department so because we waited until 6 months we were free to give Babybear what we wanted. So she had bread and pasta from the beginning, near enough, and meat. Raw tomatoes she always avoided and does seem to have a wee sensitivity to (although not for the last couple of weeks so it may be fading), also kiwi, strawberries etc i didn't give her in case of latex sensitivities. i didn't anticipate any dairy issues either so she had cheese from early on as well.

Likewise no nuts for the first year, what else? My friend, who is a paediatrician working in A&E says as a wee guideline you could be cautious of 'uncooked red things' in the first year, so i think i listened to that a bit. apart from red peppers, which she'd had before he told me that and loved chewing on when very wee.

if you do give her some dairy and want to be a bit cautious, just give it to her with other foods you are certain that she has no intolerance to, and nothing else new for a few days afterwards. that way if there is a reaction at least you'll know what caused it.

I statred giving her this when she was old enough to eat from her hands, so probably pretty much around 7 months.

Allergy advice is varying at the moment, some say it is good to start early and some say to wait. I think that you really have to make your own judgment call on things.

The thing with us is that we didn't have any advice at the start, so I didn't really think much past letting her eat what she is able to.

PS I forgot to say on the recipe that we use something like spirals or tubes with this as it's easier to get hold of and the mix sticks better than with spaghetti - which is great with spag bol!