Eating Out With My Toddler... IKEA

Restaurant @ IKEA Tampines
Do you know that they give free baby food for diners? I didnt until now!
What a waste as Bay is off bottled baby food already.
Kids' menu is S$2.90 per set including an ice-cream which cost $0.50 from the bistro
If you ordered the kids' chicken nuggets meal, IKEA will donate $1.75 to help educate kids!
That means the meal is like $0.65 only!
What's more, for the month of November, for every $20 in the restaurant, you will get a $5 shopping voucher for home furnishing products.
There's a little play area inside the restaurant for the kids to have fun while adults eat and chat!

 Going gaga about "making" ice-cream... Bay is 27.5 months
  

Enjoying their after dinner treats!

Stay tuned to "Eating out with kids"... I will share more as and when I remembered to take pics!

Eating Out With My Toddler... Shin-Sapporo Ramen

Shin-Sapporo Ramen @ Century Square
Kid's menu is available but I thought it's not so value-for-$
We ordered the set menu with 1 mini ramen and 1 mini don. (We had Menchi ramen + Oyaku don)
With the FREE topup of ramen, (no free soup, just the plain ramen, so you have to keep some soup for the topup) this set meal is more than enough for the 2 of us.

 
Stay tuned to "Eating out with kids"... I will share more as and when I remembered to take pics!
 
 

Eating Out With My Toddler... Suki-Ya Hotpot Buffet

Suki-Ya Hotpot Buffet @ Tampines Mall, B1
Free for kids below 4 years old
We had the double-sided hotpot and ordered a non-spicy soup base for the kids, they loved the udon, japanese fish cake and of course the softy ice-cream
There is "free flow" of iPad at the kids corner!
We were given a table near to the kids corner so the boys can play while we eat our dinner.



Stay tuned to "Eating out with kids"... I will share more as and when I remembered to take pics!

Fun With Food - Edamame

Edamame is a common food in our part of the world, readily available in the super market and easily prepared. It's a healthy snack with a nutritional punch! Fun too for the little fingers to practice their fine motor skills.

Bay is 26.5 months old and with some practice, he can "extract" the beans from the pod and separate the "used" pods. Choke hazard though, so do supervised your child while eating.

  

Eating Out With My Toddler... NYDC

I eat out with my boy most of the time after he crossed the "ok to eat outside food" official age of 12 months. Most of the restuarants in Singapore provide some form of kids cutleries and high chair, so eating out is not much of an issue. Many places provide very reasonable kid's menu.
 

FAQ 1: Who said 12 months is the official "ok to eat outside food" age?
Ans: Hmm... I dont know and I didnt ask!

FAQ 2: Am I concern about the excessive intake of salt, oil and MSG?
Ans: Yes, of course! I will try to "wash" the food in warm water if I find them too salty or oily and I usually leave out the soup or gravy.

FAQ 3: What sort of food do you order for your boy?
Ans: Usually I will check out the kids menu first and see if they have any interesting food. Most of the time he will share my food. I will have to order something non-spicy for him though. It is important to make a conscious effort to maintain a well balance diet while eating out. Meaning that there shall be protein, fiber and carbohydrate for each meal. I find that it is easy to forget about the greens when eating outside.

Here's the food that I ordered for my boy while eating out...

02 October 2011: NYDC @ Tampines One.
We ordered the chicken little spaggy and they are considered enough to cut the spag into short length.
No drinks included in the meal


Stay tuned to "Eating out with kids"... I will share more as and when I remembered to take pics!

Lazy mummy's cooking method

I'm a lazy mummy who hardly cook for my boy. Fortunately my mum is a good cook and Bay still gets his fairshare of home-cooked meals.

My parents were not in town for 1 week and I had to take over cooking Bay's meals. I'm a FTWM and had very little time to cook (excuse! excuse! excuse!), so I pre-cooked the soup stock and freeze it.
  

Making the Soup Stock

     

Ingredients

• 1 potato
• 1 large onion
• 1 corn
• 1 carrot
• Lean pork, about 200g
• 1.5L water

Note: Onion has a strong taste, you will have to cook it until it is totally soft to eliminate the "spicy" taste. Dont add if your little one is not used to the taste. You can also add apple into the soup to make it sweeter.

  
Method

There is really no method, just peel and dice everything up then dump into a big pot. Heat up until boiling and simmer till everything is soft. No need to put seasoning when cooking for babies.  I added onion as it is suppose to keep the flu bugs away.

I packed the soup into 180ml storage cups and freeze it. Kept the leftover for Kippy, so nothing is wasted

P.S. I got to know that dogs are not supposed to eat onions!
Luckily there were no issues when we fed him food cooked with onions.realised that 

Ways to use the soup stock

I try to think of various ways to use the soup stock everyday so that Bay can have different type of food.  It takes about 15 minutes to prepare his meals

         

With mee sua    

Method:

1. Wash a small section of mee sua and cut into length of about 2cm. 
2. Add mee sua to a small pot of about 200ml boiling water, continue to boil until mee sua is cooked
3. Strain the water away
4. Heat up a portion (180ml) of defrosted soup stock and add in the cooked mee sua
5. Boil a while more and it's done!

Tips: My mum always cooked the mee sua in a separate pot of water instead of adding it directly into the soup base to cook. This is because the mee sua on its own contain salt and by adding it into the soup base will make it too salty.  I'm cooking for my 8.5 mths baby who is not yet ready to take any salt in his diet, cooking the mee sua separately will "wash out" some salt.

  

With brown rice cereal    

Method:

1. Follow the instructions for the brown rice cereal that you are using to get the correct consistency. I bought the Eu Yan Sang Si Shen Brown Rice powder for my boy.
2. I replaced 1 portion of the soup stock instead of water and add some chopped up spinach and "午" fish.

With porridge    

Method:

1. I use the Tiger Food Jar to cook the porridge. Follow the instructions in trial for tiger food jar and replace the water with soup stock.
2. I added some extra ingredients to create versions of porridge for different days.

Top picture: porridge with just only the soup stock.
Middle picture: porridge with chopped broccoli and soup stock
Bottom picture: porridge with blended steam corn, "午" fish and soup stock.

See also Sweet potato porride in Tiger Food Jar

Sweet potato porridge in Tiger Food Jar

I managed to get quite decent sweet potato porridge with the Tiger Food Jar.
Just follow the instructions in trial for tiger food jar and add 1 serving of sweet potato cut into thin slices.  I did boil the contents for 5 minutes before pouring into the food jar.
  

Right side is how it was like straight from the food jar. (after pouring out the "am")

Left side is how it is after I meshed it with the back of a spoon for my 8 months old baby

Bay is not very enthusiastic about food and takes 45-60 mins to finish 1 small bowl. He loves to drink the "am" though.

See also Lazy mummy's cooking method

Trial for the Tiger Food Jar

I did a trial with the Tiger Food Jar and it is really fuss free!

The porridge turn out to be very soft, something like those watery teochew porridge. I need to pour the "am" away and mesh up the contents a little with a spoon to suit my 7.5 months baby. I feed him the "am" separately like a soup and he loves it too!

The difficult part about cooking with this food jar is to estimate how much rice grains and water to add.

Serving size: 1 bowl of porridge

Ingredients

• 1 chinese soupspoon of rice grains, washed
• 300ml boiling hot water 

Method

1. Washed the food jar and pre-heat it by pouring some boiling hot water into it. Set for 10 mintues
2. Pour out the hot water
3. Add in the rice grains and pour in the boiling hot water.
4. Close the cap, wait for 4 hours... Voila! It's ready to eat.  

Tip: It is best if you can put the rice grains and water in a pot and heat up until boiling for 5 minutes before pouring the contents into the food jar. This will reduce the waiting time to 2 hours.

  

If you are looking for something that whip up those sticky cantonese porridge, this gadget will not do the job.

See also Sweet potato porride in Tiger Food Jar, Lazy mummy's cooking method