JAPANESE BABY WEANING METHOD: Introducing the equipment
Hello Steemian parents,
I am very glad that my previous entry about Japanese weaning style had received positive feedback from the community. Therefore, I decide to continue sharing my experiences about this interesting weaning method. In this post, I’m gonna introduce some helpful equipments needed when you choose to follow this weaning style.
Fortunately, I have a friend who is living in Japan, so I asked her to buy these equipments for me. If you read books about Japanese weaning, you can easily see that they have a list of what will be needed when you cook for your baby. I bought bowls, spoons, plates and two cooking sets from Combi and Richell. These two labels seem to be really well-known in Japan. Maybe some of you will question what a cooking set is, let me show another picture so you can clearly have a look and get the hang of what it is:
A typical cooking set includes a grater, strainer, juicer and a pestle. They help the cooking process much more easier, especially during the first period of weaning. This is how I have used the cooking set to cook veggie puree for my son when he was 7 months. Normally we have to boil or steam the vegetables, and then use the pestle to smash them into tiny pieces, after that we use the strainer to filter (I always pour some water to make this process easier).
However, I think it is not necessary to buy Japanese cooking sets if you are in a country that it is hard to find them. Instead, you can use similar equipments from your own kitchen, it doesn’t matter :) Let’s have a look at my weaning cooking equipments (I feel like I am a little girl with her little kitchen and toys since they are really tiny, colorful and lovely :D)
As I have stated from the previous entry about weaning, mothers should also help their children to have good meal by lovely food decoration, and one of the secret is to have nice tableware sets. To be honest , I am addicted to these cutie, I have collected them since my son was only 4 months. I have bought so many bowls and spoons that my hubby ordered me to stop otherwise he would hide them all way haha. But trust me, these lovely tableware stuffs actually helped my son to focus more on his meal and have good appetite, therefore it is a good investment ;)
It is always a good idea to have a little pot to cook for your baby. During the first months of weaning, they eat just a little and it will be difficult to cook with a big pot. I bought this mini pot from WMF for approximately 20 euro, a reasonable price for such good quality.
If you choose to follow Japanese weaning method, these freezing trays will be really helpful. Normally I cook everything from vegetables to meat, fishes in one day, and then put them in freezing trays. By this way, we can have the supply for a week, which saves much time and energy. We can cook rice porridge and put them in trays as well, this is how I have done:
One or two hours before the meal, you can take them out of the freezer and let it naturally melted, after that use a pot to reheat and serve your child. You can mix veggie cubes and porridge cubes together to create a veggie porridge, very convenient.
This is a multitasking steamer and from my own experience, it is the best choice for mothers with a lack of time. With this steamer, you can have everything done in the blink of an eye, instead of using many pots to cook/steam separate food. I often put every kinds of vegetable in the steamer and look at the time to get each one out (since each of the veggie is ready at different time, for example potato will take 20 mins while sweet pea only 10 mins).
I would recommend steaming rather than boiling since it is the best way to keep vitamins and minerals from foods, especially vegatables. After being steamed, they can be smash, blended, filtered and then put into freezing tray, and we have prepared the baby food for the whole week :)
Thank you for reading my experiences, and please share yours too. It would be great if we can have a parenting group here on Steemit, how do you think ? I will appreciate all the comments and see you in my next post. <3<3<3
Very cool. I love the photos too. It is fascinating. I had never considered these kinds of things until my brother had his two twins - who are both coming up to 2 years old now.
Where I live, there are these HUGE Motherhood/mummy exhibitions or fairs. There are always plenty of options for baby weaning products and equipment for sale to help mums prepare foods and purees for their babies. I think they have pretty awesome steamer-blender combinations that combine the tools that you need into 1 handy gadget!
Not that all of this stuff isn't cool and nice to have, but with all the extra things you're buying for the baby as it is, I'd rather keep all the additional appliances to the bare minimum!
I love the idea of silicon ice cube trays though! Definitely beats the plastic variety that many people are used to having and it's probably going to be a heckuva lot easier to get those cubes out for feeding too!
The Avent steamer and blender is nice, however if you follow the Japanese weaning you won't need it, since we will not blend everything to the very smooth level, japanese style focus on the rough factor of food, babies only eat puree and smooth stuffs during the very few weeks after they start their weaning period. Then the rough level will gradually increase, that is when we will simply use a knife to slice food into tiny pieces, a scissor to cut the veggies and so on. That is why I think there is no need to buy the Avent machine. But if you follow other methods it might be a helpful tool though.
About the freezing trays, I have the full set from
Silicon to plastic. The trays I recommend above is good ones too since they are especially designed for baby food, and it will not so hard to get the cubes out. However I agree the the silicon ones are also very useful. I have the thin plastic trays bought from Japan and these trays are amazing, very easy to get cubes out too ^^
But I do agree with you that we can just use our simple applians from the kitchen if we do not want to add so much extra cost sine raising a baby costs bunch of money already ^^
Thank you for your interesting comment <3
I need to figure out how to get my baby to eat vegetables... she tried something sweet and now it is impossible to get her to eat stuff that is good for her! Ugh... the trials of parenting! :)
babies have moods tho. What she might dislike today, she might love tomorrow! Just keep offering plenty of healthy and nutritious food! And whatever you do, don't add sugar into anything if you don't want them to start liking sweets! You can go for the sweeter veggies perhaps? Corn, Pumpkins and squash or fruits! All just as healthy and packed full of fiber and vitamins.
try adding a little sugar to the veg. Over time take the sugar out. It should condition her to associate the taste of the veg with the sweet reward.
(Also, fresh organic veg tends to have a much higher sugar content. I don't want to make assumptions about your veg source, so I bracket this. But it would be interesting, if only from an experimental POV, to offer store bought vs home grown veg and see what a child reaches for :) )
From my own experience, you can decorate the veggie dish to make it more attracting, make the cute faces, fun shapes for example, I hope it will help :)
@mibenkito
This is so true. Most of the Orientals do this and they've seem to have gotten very creative not just with the dish but also with the food styling or the presentation of the food.
image credit
I grew up in a Third World Country where almost everybody at that time just eat vegetables. During those years (I belong to the generation X), most pregnant women ate vegetables while conceiving so it wasn't hard training the babies when they came out of the tummy. Meat was pretty expensive back then you only get to see them during what we call "fiestas" or celebration for the saints back then.
Later on, processed meat has been welcomed in the market and food chains flooded in almost every corner in the Philippines, everybody started eating meat since it's got cheaper. The 45 days chicken is pretty much a trend in there these days. This time, many parents have a hard time making their kids eat right.
I think it's very important to train the baby to eating right -vegetables, fruits anything healthy while they are still in the tummy. Mamas have a great role to play for that to happen. Kudos to all the creative Mamas in the world.
Thanks for your comment, I can't agree more. That's why I always love collecting tiny little bowls, plates to make my son feel like every meal is a fun experience. We eat by eyes as well, don't we?
I would think that Amazon should have some of these. If not, Rakuten.
Yep but in europe I dont think amazon has these kinds of stuffs :(
hehheh.... sorry, I'm very busy body because I think Amazon still have bright people.
look at one of them I found in UK.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mumi-Bubi-Solids-Starter-Kit/dp/B004A9ZF3Y/ref=sr_1_1_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1475655406&sr=8-1&keywords=solids+starter+kit
AND you should advertise for them. :-)
Ah yes, these freezing trays I bought them in amazon usa, much more cheaper @ace108, I mean the japanese cooking sets, we cant find them in amazon europe or usa, if they have it's gonna be too overpriced :(
Get your friend to ship them to you and start selling them.:-)
Haha good idea ;)
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Hi my name is david from japan. I started steemit sns in Japan. this article very cool.