Bringing porridge out..

I bring BabyS out quite often. Shopping, church, etc. I will also bring her porridge along.

When she was eating porridge for lunch and dinner, i'll just prepare two portions at once (2 chinese soup spoons worth of raw rice) and use my thermal flask to store it.

A good thermal flask is worth investing in. Regardless of brand, as long as it keeps baby's food hot. room temp or cold porridge is yucky, and a breeding ground for bacteria ..

I bought my Zojirushi thermal food flask way back in 2000, when I was almost starting work, cos I was so obsessed with Japanese bentos (still am) and the amazing containers and tupperwares (Still am too!). Well, i didnt get to use it cos too lazy to cook.. Well, almost 10 yrs later I get to use it and it serves me well! I bought it for about $50 plus back then. I bought this brand cos there werent as many brand of thermal food containters as now.

Mine comes with 3 compartments. If i dish the porridge into it at about 8am, by 6pm the porridge is still warm! NOw that babyS has moved onto solids like rice, sides, etc. I still use this and it keeps the heat just as well.

I find the brands Endo and LA gourmet not bad too. And definitely cheaper..

There are BPs (Bulk Purchases) often on the parenting forums like this..

But if you dont go out for long hours like me, then maybe a single serving flask will do.. I have two of those (one LA gourmet and another brand is a china brand). which serve well when I only have one serving of food and I dont wanna lug the huge zojirushi one out..

Lobang tip: Courts at Tampines (Bargain hall L1) has a wide range of cooking equipment, flasks etc liek La Gourmet there. I bought mine there and it was cheaper than what was being sold at departmental stores.. (cannot remember exact price now but remember being absolutely thrilled at the savings).

Weaning.. Moving along from purees to porridge

I kept BabyS on her cereal and puree diet for about 2 months b4 I decided to move her onto porridge and meats (So she could get her iron intake from meats)

I had alot of questions as to how to make porridge for babies..

 "cook rice grains as per normal, stirring occasionally to get smoother consistency?"

"soak the night b4 and then cook as normal, and stir occasionally to get smoother consistency?"

"grind the rice grains into smaller pieces then cook?"

"mash the porridge after its cooked?"

In the end we decided to make it more water and after that mash it with those mashers meant for mashing potatoes and it worked pretty well. Less time consuming than soaking the night b4, stirring constantly etc..

We used a slow cooker to cook the porridge. THe amount of water you add to the pot also depends on the size of your cooker too.

We bought a small slow cooker from Cornell with a High, Low and Auto function. This cooker was a good investment. If you are like me and dont have an extra pair of hands to take care of the baby while you stay at the stove to watch over the porridge, invest in a slow cooker.

Amt of rice and length of cooking time:
One chinese soup spoon of rice will give you one rice bowl of porridge.

I cannot remember the size of my cooker, but it was the smallest one. And my mum and I would usually add in water till its 1 inch about the rice.

For my slow cooker, to achieve mushy enough porridge, it will either take 3 hours on low or 1.5hours on high (although 1hr is sometimes more than enough)

More on how to cook porridge in the next post!

The basics of weaning (Part 2)- lets start mashing!

Now that your baby is used to this idea of eating and is ok with rice cereal (or whatever other cereal u have introduced) lets introduce some variety!

I had lots of fun making puree for BabyS.. I love to cook, and cooking is destressing for me. With a baby on hand, i didnt have time to cook normal big meals, but pureeing was good enuf to destress me..

Some basic equipments you'll need are:

a sieve

This is good for straining the puree to make sure u've gotten rid of all the big lumps or any fibres that might be hard for junior to chew.. Good to invest in one cos even though BabyS is way past this puree stage now, i still use this when preparing her pasta (i dont like to mix her utensils with utensils meant for adults..)

Ice Cube Trays (with cover)

I got my ice cube trays with cover from Daiso. Anabel Karmel's book recommends one ounce of puree per meal, thats equivalent to one ice cube. So after I puree it, i just pack it into the ice cube trays and pop out one cube whenever i need to. And a tray with a cover is better cos u'll be ablet o protect it from contamination from other stuff in the freezer. Be sure to put a lable on the cover, to help you identify what puree is what.. I prefer to put a piece of plastic cling wrap over the puree b4 i put the cover on..

And cos it was all in one tray, it was easy for me to bring the purees to my mum's place for her to feed BabyS when she was with grandma..


Some mummies also buy this. Individual food cubes. I didnt get this plainly becos it was more expensive and Daiso doesnt have such a thing.

Both have their pros and cons. Ice cube tray is more convenient in a way i dont have to close every single lid (i'm lazy ok..haha) and easy to store in the freezer. But if I want to bring the puree out, the food cubes are more convenient, becos if i used my ice cube tray i'll need to decan the ice cube to another container..

Whichever method u use, jsut make sure its well covered and keep pureed food in the freezer for no more than a month. (but i never got to keep puree for that long.. i dont have that much time to prepare puree for one month at once. usually the puree is abotu 2 weeks worth of food)

I also got a new sauce pan, bowls, and cutting board just to prepare BabyS's food..

To steam the foods, u can either do it in a pan/ pot over the fire or do it my lazy way, in the rice cooker. Just get a metal steamer and put the foods on top or into a bowl and on top of the steamer, put more water into the rice cooker and cook away! dont wait for the 'cook' button to turn on.. ur food would have turned to mush by then.. Occasionally check if the food is steamed to your desired softness.

The rice cooker method works when you want to steam stuff in bulk.

At the start, I thought pureeing and mashing was simple. Just steam till soft and mash. Whats so hard right.. until i mashed sweet potato..


Oh man.. this portion here is equivalent to 2 medium sized sweet potatoes.. it took me 45 mins to mash it ok!! Its easy to mash but i wanted it to be smooth and lump free. I took the pieces of steamed sweet potato and individually pushed each cube thru the sieve.. not a easy job!!! Mashing it with a fork then passing thru the sieve later on didnt make things much easier also.. After this ordeal i decided to get a piece of equipment that I have not regretted getting..

Electric Blender!!! I bought this Phillips HR 1361 blender from Courts at $49..

It made blending stuff (even sweet potatoes) such a ease! And it only took a min or two to blend it all into fine mush.. something that took me 45 mins previously!