Review: Post's Alpha-Bits Cereal

Brand: Post

Origin: USA

Specialises in: Cereals

Where to buy: NTUC or other leading supermarkets

Link: postcereals

Product: Alpha-Bits wholesome sweetened oat and corn cereal

Weight: 11.5oz (326g)

Serving size for children below 4: 3/4cup (21g)

Vitamin D promotes healthy bones and teeth by helping the body absorb calcium and is important for a growing child's health needs. However, not many foods are rich in Vitamin D. Post's Alpha-Bits cereal claims to be an excellent source of vitamin D over and above the fact that it contains 11 essential vitamins and minerals. Also a good source of vitamins B1, B6 and B12 - to help support a child's healthy nervous system - this cereal is made with the child in mind.

This cereal contains 15g whole grain per 28g serving and is made with whole grain oat flour as its main ingredient.

The goodness of whole grains according to the Health Promotion Board:

"Eating more whole-grains has been shown to lower the risk of developing chronic diseases such as heart diseases, diabetes and certain cancers. The health benefits of whole-grains are not just contributed by fibre or any single nutrient. Instead, the different components all work together to protect your health. For example, vitamin E, selenium and phytic acid found in whole-grains have antioxidant effects which may help prevent damage to blood vessels, while soluble fibre helps reduce blood cholesterol. These play a role in lowering the risk of developing heart disease.

Whole-grains may also support weight management as they provide bulk to the diet. This promotes the feeling of fullness and helps reduce the risk of overeating."

If nutrition isn't enough to get this box of cereal into your shopping trolley, then perhaps the element of fun while eating might (read: great for fussy eaters):

On the packaging, there are two suggestions as to how to play games with the cereal:

Taste-wise, though it is sweetened, it isn't overly sweet and is suitable for children's consumption.

It's great as fingerfood or with milk but because it's sweetened, I wouldn't recommend this for children below the age of 1.

The downside of this cereal is that the alphabets aren't crafted all that beautifully as what's shown on the packaging and I believe after almost finishing the whole pack of cereal with Alicia, I haven't found the complete set of the alphabets. Many times I get Alicia asking, "this is...?" with reference to what alphabet the cereal is supposed to be. Some Ds look like Os, Fs are rare, Z is few and far between and I think I really haven't found G or K!

On top of that, there are scrape bits of cereal that don't form any alphabets and sad to say, if Alicia's looking carefully at the bowl, she would chuck those aside and go for those pieces that are recognizable as alphabets. Thus the fun part is actually diluted by the fact that the pieces aren't crafted as well as say alphabet pastas. :)

Mini Cottage Pies (II)

Ooh, look at the golden brown pies! :)

This time I used red potatoes instead of purple ones so no purple pies! haha... and yes, these brown nicely as you can see from the pic. :)

Waiting to be baked...

Close-up! Look at the smooth texture of the potato prior to baking! :P

Cottage pies usually require the use of ground beef (and in the case of of the English, they use lamb or mutton). In my previous recipe, I used minced chicken because I didn't have ground beef on hand. This time, I had extra ground beef (leftover from the making of spaghetti sauce) and so I immediately thought of making some cottage pies since Alicia had finished the last lot quite a while ago.

If you or your child do not consume beef for religious reasons or simply detest the taste of beef, you can always give my previous recipe a try instead - not as authentic but nevertheless yummy! :)

Mini Cottage Pies (II)

Ingredients:

• 3 egg-sized red potatoes
• 3 tablespoons minced beef
• 1/3 yellow onion (minced) - I ran out of onion yesterday but would have added it if I had some
• 1/2 small carrot (minced)
• 2 tablespoons frozen green peas
• unsalted all-purpose herbs
• unsalted butter

Marinate beef with:

• 1 tsp worcestershire sauce
• 1-2tsp oyster sauce
• 1 tsp sugar (optional)
• dash of black pepper

Method:

1. Marinate minced beef.
2. Peel potatoes and cube them. Boil them till they are soft.
3. Mash the potatoes with about 1 tablespoon butter, herbs and a pinch of salt.
4. Heat wok and melt butter.
5. Fry the minced onion and carrot till onion is soft.
6. Add the minced beef. Continue frying so that the chicken doesn't clump together.
7. Add the peas when beef is almost cooked.
8. Dish up the filling.
9. Fill the silicon mini muffin cups with the filling to about the half-way mark.
10. Add the mashed potato on top and shape them like little muffins.
11. Preheat oven to 200degC.
12. Bake mini pies for 20-25min at 200degC. (Usually 20min will do for mine)

These mini pies can be frozen and defrosted in the fridge.

Because of the mini size, these can serve well as snacks or even breakfast. Just give more for lunch or dinner! :) Or pair them up with another western dish such as spaghetti - that's what I do sometimes!

Mini Cottage Pies for the tot!

How would you like some of these?

They aren't baked yet though... but don't they look nice?

I decided to bake mini cottage pies for Alicia the other day, but using minced chicken in place of minced beef since I didn't have beef on hand. And just in case you're wondering, the potato I used was a purple one hence the violet hue instead of the usual yellow. :) Hubby actually thought it was yam... lol.

Check out Alicia's response:

Hot!

Help me with it daddy!

Waiting...

Still waiting for it to cool...

hmmm... what does it taste like...

mmmm... not bad...

Fresh out from the oven!

Mini Cottage Pies for the tot

Waiting to be baked...

Makes 10 mini pies

Ingredients:

• 1 red potato
• 1 purple potato
• 3 tablespoons minced chicken fillet
• 1/3 yellow onion (minced)
• 1/2 small carrot (minced)
• 2 tablespoons frozen green peas
• unsalted all-purpose herbs
• unsalted butter

Marinate chicken with:

• 1 tsp worcestershire sauce
• 1-2tsp oyster sauce
• 1 tsp sugar
• dash of black pepper

Method:

1. Marinate minced chicken.
2. Peel potatoes and cube them. Boil them till they are soft.
3. Mash the potatoes with about 1 tablespoon butter and a pinch of salt.
4. Heat wok and melt butter.
5. Fry the minced onion and carrot till onion is soft.
6. Add the minced chicken. Continue frying so that the chicken doesn't clump together.
7. Add the peas when chicken is almost cooked.
8. Dish up the filling.
9. Fill the silicon mini muffin cups with the filling to about the half-way mark.
10. Add the mashed potato on top.
11. Preheat oven to 200degC.
12. Bake mini pies for 20-25min at 200degC.

These mini pies can be frozen and defrosted in the fridge.

Because of the mini size, these can serve well as snacks or even breakfast. Just give more for lunch or dinner! :)

Alicia's response in the beginning was lukewarm and almost disheartening but after serving these little pies to her a few times, she started to warm up to them and eats well now! :)

Review: FairPrice's Roundies (Corn pops with honey)

Brand: FairPrice

Origin: Germany

Where to buy: NTUC

Product: Roundies (corn pops with honey)

Weight: 250g

Allergen advice: Contains soya products (soya lecithin)

May contain traces of cereals containing gluten and milk products

Here's our latest breakfast food which we alternate with Cheerios to give ourselves and Alicia some variety for breakfast cereals.

Taste-wise, I find that it's really quite nice and you can serve it with or without milk. Personally I munch on them without milk as a snack (and so does Alicia)... haha... it's that tasty and addictive. :P

Though a sweetened cereal, it is not too sweet in my opinion though I wouldn't advise that children below 1 consume this product as they should not be introduced to salt or sugar at that age. :)

If you really find it too sweet to eat on its own, eating it together with milk definitely helps as the corn pops soak up the milk relatively quickly. Hence, if you are going to take some time to eat the cereal, make sure you don't pour all the cereal into the milk at one go or you'll have to eat soggy cereal (which is gross, in my opinion). :)

Besides the great taste, the cereal is a source of vitamins E, B6, B12, B1, B2 and B3! :)

Give it a try! Who says housebrand stuff aren't good? :)

New snack cum breakfast food

I finally convinced hubby to buy this pack of cereal for Alicia! He refused to buy it earlier as he just felt that she wouldn't like it and since it comes in such big packaging, he didn't want to land up with another type of food she refuses which we have to eat instead. Besides, it has happened one too many times that the super healthy food that I ask hubby to buy for Alicia tastes not just bland but awful. Hehe. I guess he's very wary these days of any smart-alecky ideas of mine. :P Oh well. Anyway, we even bought milk to go along with this cereal as we decided that both of us will eat it too!

And so, this morning, Alicia and I had this yummy breakfast food together. It's her first time having cow's milk and she's willing to eat the cereal together with the milk so I think it's quite a great leap forward. My fussy one has progressed much lately and I think I might just dedicate a post to her improved eating!

Anyway, the cereal tastes much much nicer than expected, probably because it's been lightly sweetened. Cute little Os which come in different colours due to the different types of grains are visually appealing too! Thumbs up for the Cheerios! :)

Mini Banana Muffins

I finally bought bananas recently and after waiting a few days more till the bananas were really ripe, I made the much-awaited mini banana muffins for alicia. These smell and taste much better than the applesauce muffins even though I love apples more than bananas and bananas rank really low on the list of favourite fruits for me. :D

I adapted the recipe I found on http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/banana-crumb-muffins/Detail.aspx. I made a really small batch of muffins coz i was afraid it wouldn't agree with alicia's palate and since I'm not a fan of bananas, I wasn't prepared to eat them in case alicia rejected them. But they turned out really yummy, even though I didn't do the crumb bit very well... hehe...

Mini Banana Muffins (makes 8)

Wet ingredients:

• 100ml mashed banana (2 bananas)


• 1 egg, lightly beaten


• 25ml olive oil

Dry ingredients:

• 60g or 120ml flour (I used 20g self-raising flour + 40g whole wheat flour)


• 1 tablespoon wheatgerm


• 1.5T brown sugar


• 1/3tsp ground cinnamon


• 1/3tsp baking powder


• 1/3tsp baking soda


• a pinch of salt

For the crumb topping:

• a dash of ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tablespoon unsalted butter
• 1.5 tablespoon raw brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon whole wheat flour

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degC.


2. In a large bowl, mix together flour, baking soda, baking powder, ground cinnamon sugar and salt.


3. In another bowl, beat together bananas, egg and olive oil.


4. Stir the banana mixture into the flour mixture just until moistened. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups (I use silicon cups).


5. In a small bowl, mix together the following for the crumb topping: brown sugar, flour and cinnamon. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Sprinkle topping over muffins*.


6. Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes until a toothpick inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean.

*This time round, I followed a reviewer's suggestion of adding the topping 5 min before the muffins are done. Thus, I added the topping at the 10-min mark but the topping couldn't mix well with the muffin already thus the crumbly and chunky bits of topping you see in the photo... I think I'll just follow the recipe's instructions the next time round and see how it goes.

Quietly eating her breakfast

Recently, as Alicia has rejected other breakfast items like pancakes, bread and fried egg (probably coz it's teething season), I've been giving her a mixture of whole grain healthy snacks which she eats like toddler cereal in the morning (but without the milk). She has her milk later from me after she finishes the bowl of whole grains. :)

I've been giving her the whole grains in this pink bowl so she has already come to identify the pink bowl with her yummy whole grains. Once I 'set the table' for her (i.e. put the pink bowl on the blue tray), she'd just sit down and eat her breakfast quietly. Sometimes after sitting down for awhile, she gets bored, so she shifts herself, and the bowl of course, to the coffee table, where she would stand and continue eating. Almost every time, she will explore what happens when she tilts the bowl or turns it upside down. I try not to be annoyed and will get her to help to pick up the pieces of food and return it to the bowl. When I sit down with her to eat the food, I will give her a spoon to try to self-feed. Well, it's easier to start getting her to self-feed 'dry' foods definitely as it's less messy!

Here's a video of her quietly eating breakfast on her own:

Organic Happy Baby Puffs

Alicia, as you can already tell, is into eating puffs of all sorts. We discovered this range of organic puffs at the pharmacy across Cold Storage at Great World City. So far, we've bought the banana puffs and just today, Alicia tried the spinach ones at my friend's place. This has half the amount of sugar in Gerber Puffs so it's definitely healthier!

Gerber Puffs

Alicia used to eat the Strawberry Apple flavoured puffs since she was about 9 months old and only recently we bought a new flavour for her - peach - and she is in love with it. Well, this is probably one of the least healthy snacks she has due to the corn syrup but I think it's still acceptable coz it's not like I allow her to consume a large amount each time.

Nowadays, she gets an assortment of healthy wholegrain snacks for snack time and at breakfast sometimes, where she eats them like cereal.

Teddy Puffs

Alicia started eating these Teddy Puffs when she was 10mths old and she's been going through phases of loving and hating it since. Just last week she was re-introduced to this during class at Julia Gabriel (after a few months of not eating it) and she loved it for a grand total of two days where she stuffed herself silly with the puffs. Subsequently, she started to show signs of rejection again.

I guess it's becoz she's teething again (I just discovered a new tooth two nights ago - I believe it's part of a molar) and coz these puffs are rather hard, they may actually be a bit painful to eat with sore gums....

Are these teddies yummy? Hmm, I think they are and one of my friends simply loves snacking on this - and she isn't a toddler! :)

Crisp Brown Rice

I discovered this new healthy snack for Alicia when she attended class at Julia Gabriel. It's crisp brown rice! The brand of brown rice crispies she ate at JG was Erewhon (which is available at VitaKids) but coz it was out of the way for me to go to a VitaKids outlet, I just settled for another brand of crispies for her.

Here's the pic of the Crisp Brown Rice I bought from the organic store at Harbour Front.

What I love most about this healthy snack is that there's only one ingredient used to make the snack - brown rice! How much healthier can it get? :) And the most important thing is that Alicia likes it!

Mini Applesauce Muffins

I finally baked a new batch of muffins for Alicia. Initially I had intended to make banana muffins this time round but I didn't manage to get the bananas I wanted so I just stuck with applesauce instead. In any case, she's a great fan of applesauce and when she saw me preparing her applesauce that day while she was having dinner, she insisted on having the applesauce before she continued with the rest of dinner. I gave her 2 tablespoons of applesauce but after she finished it, she asked for more but I refused to give her more coz if not she would not have space in her little tummy for the rest of dinner...


Anyway, here's the pic of the new applesauce muffins:



And here's the recipe:



Mini Applesauce Muffins


Wet ingredients
200ml homemade applesauce
50ml olive oil
1 small egg (lightly beaten) (I use Seng Choon's First Born eggs and they are really quite small)



Dry ingredients
50ml Origin's organic raw sugar
150ml self-raising flour (sifted)
50ml whole wheat flour (sifted)
2 tablespoons Origin's raw wheatgerm (for extra nutrition)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt



Directions
Mix the wet ingredients and dry ingredients well separately.
Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients.
Stir in the wet ingredients, until just combined.
Spoon into lightly greased mini muffin tins. (I used mini silicon muffin cups I bought at Daiso and the muffins came out so easily!)
Bake at 180degC for about 17min, or until golden.


Freeze up to 3mths.



With this amount of ingredients, I made 19 mini applesauce muffins. I had experimented earlier on two other batches of muffins: the first I made with 100ml sugar but they turned out to be too sweet. The next batch I made I added baby oats on top of the rest of the ingredients and cut the sugar totally but the muffins turned out too hard for Alicia and it was too bland - virtually tasteless. And so, the third batch I made, I removed the baby oats and halved the sugar and voila! Perfect for Alicia's palate: soft and moist and most importantly, not too sweet or tasteless!

Mini Muesli and Apple Muffins

I made mini muesli and apple muffins for Alicia yesterday while she was taking her nap. A close friend of mine whose daughter liked the eggless apple muffins I baked last time asked me to post the recipe here so that she can make the muffins in her own time. Well, this recipe's found on the packaging of the Heinz Muesli and Apple Cereal (for 10-15mths) so I think it's ok to share it here. :)

Mini Muesli & Apple Muffins

Ingredients

• 11/2 cups self raising flour, sifted
• 1/2 cup Heinz Muesli & Apple Cereal
• 1/2 cup light brown or raw sugar (I used Origin's organic raw sugar)
• 2T sultanas
• 1tsp cinnamon
• 3/4cup full cream milk (I used breast milk)
• 1/3cup canola oil (I used olive oil)
• 1 x 120g can Heinz Apples (I used 8T of homemade applesauce)

Method

1. Combine flour, muesli, sugar, sultanas and cinnamon.
2. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients.
3. Stir in the milk, oil and apples, until just combined.
4. Spoon into lightly greased mini muffin tins. (I used mini silicon muffin cups I bought at Daiso and the muffins came out so easily!)
5. Bake at 180degC for 12-15min, or until golden. (I had to bake it for 20-25minutes before they turned slightly golden.)

Freeze for up to 3 months.

I made 28 mini muffins (I told my friend 32 - mis-counted) but I ate 2 coz they tasted so yummy so there're just 26 mini muffins left for her. She's eaten one yesterday and one today... 24 left! :D

Here're a couple of pictures of the muffins:

The first batch fresh from the oven!

Yummy!