DIY Paint

Friday is our weekend over here in Qatar. Daddy is not working and the boys are scheduled for personalized haircut from daddy.  While daddy is giving one of the boy his haircut, mummy needed to prepare lunch. However, the other 2 boys were quite 'gluey' today. They wanted to stay in the kitchen with me. I have to quickly think of something to keep them busy in the kitchen. I remembered this DIY edible paint recipe shared by some friends recently, the ingredients needed are simple, hence I gave it a try to let them prepare the paint by themselves.

First, they helped to prepare the 3 primary colours in 3 big bowls. 

Then I gave them a small cup (we use the yogurt cups) each. Guide them to select 2 primary colours and put into his tiny cups. Let them stir and mix the colours. 

Here, they are busy stirring the colour mixture and they were definately amazed with the result (secondary colours).  

mixing the colours at the kitchen

mixing red & blue

mummy, look... red and blue makes purple

Secondary colours

Painting Session:

Syuen

Hung

Juin

Exploring with pouring method

Syuen enjoys painting on his feet

Syuen enjoys painting on his feet

Masterpiece from 2 yrs 8mths old Cubbies 

DIY Edible Paint Recipe:

1 cup multi-purpose flour

2-3 cup water

1 cup salt 

(act as preservatives for the paint, without salt, the paint mixture turns sour within a day)

Food Colouring 

(could use natural colours from food such as beet root (red), tumeric/kunyit (yellow), blue-pea flower/bunga telang (blue) )

Pasta: Cheesy Macaroni (Elbow Pasta)

 

Suitable for 1yr old toddler

(My triplets love it very much!!!) 

Ingredients: Macaroni (Elbow Pasta), Carrots, Apples, Cheese

Method:

1. Boil the pasta for 15mins (to get it really soft)

2. Boil carrots & apples, in the photo below, I boiled the carrots and then add on frozen apple puree

3. Blend the boiled carrots & apples into puree

4. Rinse the cooked pasta will cool boiled water

5. If your toddler is able to chew the pasta, then skip this step.  I find the pasta quite difficult to chew apart with the gums, so, to make my life (feeding time) slightly easier (the triplets tend to choke quite often), I'd decided to blend the pasta as well.

Do add in some water while blending it.

6. Finally add on a slice of cheese (while the puree are still hot)

7. 'Ta-Da'.. The final result after mixing all up

Could frozen up the pasta & carrot puree sauce.  Add in cheese when heating up.

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Books from Amazon:

     

Solid Food - Bananas

Cubbies are trying new food again...

Today is Bananas!

Early in the morning, after changing cubbies into their playsuits & send them downstairs, I start to prepare their breakfast.

Breakfast:
Rice Cereal with Banana Puree

6 tablespoon of rice cereal mix with milk

2 ripe bananas - blended (suppose to mash it, but it is too time consuming)

Mix the banana puree with the rice cereal

Final result - Banana Rice Cereal

Cubbies love it.  Bananas gave the sweet & fragrant flavouring to the plain rice cereal.
The cons - have to serve fast, cos the bananas will turn brown in very short time.

After breakfast, wanted to try if cubbies ready for some munching action.
Tried letting cubbies biting the whole banana (of course, with me holding on to it)
To my surprised, cubbies know how to bite the banana from my hand & start to munch it.
They love it, especially cubby HungHung, he kept asking for more.

Hence, I'd decided to give lumpier food for cubbies during lunch time.

Lunch:
6 Tbsp Smashed Potatoes &
Munchy Bananas

This time, instead of blending or mashing the bananas, I use cutting method.
I cut the bananas into very small cubes - the size that brings no choking hazard.

small tiny cubes of bananas

Cubbies took some time to get used to the lumpy texture.
Will try it again tmr.

Homemade Cereal for Triplets - Barley

Trying out new grains for triplet's porridge - BARLEY

This requires slightly more tedious steps in preparation.

Barley

After grinding it with blender - several time of grind & sieve

Results of quite fine barley powder

Cooking the fine barley powder gives very smooth creamy texture. Sometimes I do add in a bit of the less fine barley pieces to create slightly lumpier texture.

Optionally, I tried cooking the barley from the whole barley and then blend it. It looks like Barley Purée! Texture: very smooth & starchy (add in more water to reduce the starchiness)

Cubbies prefer this texture

1st Attempt making puree for cubbies

Cubbies has started on solid on their 7mth birthday.

They had been on rice cereal for a week. Time to introduce new taste/food.
Many websites recommend serving pears or sweet potatoes puree as baby first solid (after rice cereal) because these foods have natural sweetness which is easily acceptable by babies.

However, cubbydaddy is not around these few days to help in buying the ingredients. So, I just have to start them off with whatever ingredients that I can find in the fridge.
The 2 types of fruits which I found are Apples & Mango.  Since there are also websites that had introduce Apple Puree as 1st Food, I just start my 1st puree making with apples.

Apple Puree Recipe

Apples - I used 4 apples in this recipe

Steam for 10-15mins

Peel off the skin & cut into small chunks

Put cooked apples into the blender

Blend the chunks into smooth paste, add some water for easy & smoother blending

After blending

Serve warm, add luke warm water for slightly watery texture

Cool the remainder in ice cube tray,
Put the tray into a ziplock bag, frozen the puree,
Remove the frozen puree from the tray & store it in freezer (up to 2mths)

Cubbies Reaction towards Apple Puree

Hung

1st spoon: Frown

2nd spoon: Still frown

Following spoons: Frown, but still opens his mouth when spoon is near. Less anticipation as compare rice cereal

Syuen

1st spoon: Frown

2nd spoon: Less frown

Following spoons: Seems enjoying the new taste.

Juin

1st spoon: Frown, shiver

2nd spoon: Frown with mouth opening very small

Following spoon: Refuse to continue.... 

CubbyAngel's findings:

Smell: smells good during steaming & blending

Taste: sweet & slightly sour taste, may be due to the type of apple. Should try dark red apples as well

Texture: very smooth after blending, however there might be still some fibrous in the puree

Appearance: creamy colour, I was expecting it to turn brown, but it did not.