how to escape | Tales from a new life in Bali

I wrote back in my New Year goals post about how I was going to try and cook more meals from scratch for the kids. Well, that hasn’t really happened but I have been making tiny steps since the final straw a couple of months ago when I tasted the plain white rice porridge that Made’s mother was feeding them for dinner and it was so salty, I had to spit it out. That was then followed up with white bread rolls with chocolate filling

So I basically banned any food being bought from outside (except snacks as they just ignore me on that one) and I’ve been cooking my own bubur (rice porridge) every night for them. Really I’d prefer them to get more variety but it’s cheap, easy and they both love it. Kiran in particular who is a lazy eater and just loves having food shovelled into his mouth.

Anyway, part of the problem I have with cooking is that we’ve also been trying to cut down on our food bills recently and one of the things I tend to do is rely on imported fruit and veg and things like milk, cheese, bread, because I know how to make meals with them. Unfortunately they’re all kind of expensive here.

What we do have that is cheap and healthy is a whole load of tropical fruit. Up until now, our blender has sat unused in the cupboard but now I’m a convert. A while back I got an email from the lovely people at Yummi Pouch asking if I’d like to try out their product. I was a big fan of the pouches from Ella’s kitchen etc when Maya and Kiran were babies as they’re so handy to throw in a bag for feeding on the go but they are rather expensive. Also you can’t really get them here. I remember wondering why nobody had invented refillable pouches you could put your own purees in but actually somebody did – Yummi Pouches!

Now we’ve been super busy with Galungan and I’ve been working extra hard etc so my pack of Yummi Pouches sat forgotten and unopened for a couple of weeks as I couldn’t motivate myself to get out the blender. Now I’m kicking myself, wondering why I haven’t been using these all along. Let me demonstrate:

Maya was happy to be kitchen helper and chop up some banana and papaya (always in season here and very cheap). I was going to put some plain yogurt in too but somebody put it in the freezer. Kiran helped by eating banana and pressing the buttons on the blender.

So we’re talking literally a couple of minutes to chop up some fruit and throw it in the blender, plus bonus toddler entertainment/motor skills development. After whizzing it up for a few seconds, I poured it into the pouches which have a zip-lock opening and handed them one each:

They LOVED it! In the space of about two minutes they managed to polish off two bananas and a huge chunk of papaya between them. Kiran even decided to carry his around with him in the tricycle basket.

This is such a good idea and I’m so totally going to feed them smoothies for breakfast every morning and bring them as snacks when we go out. I might even have a go at doing some of those green smoothies that are all the rage these days. Who would have thought it would be so easy to get little people to consume massive quantities of fruit?

Yummi Pouches can be put in the freezer (so I’m totally planning on making up a weeks’s worth in one go) and washed in the dishwasher. I washed them with a normal bottle brush, no problem. They’re also BPA and phthalate free. I don’t have much else to say except they get a big thumbs up from us. Or a whole hand, if you’re Kiran

You can buy Yummi Pouches online at their website and they’re $14.99 for a set of 6. There are also some recipes on there, which I’ll be checking out soon.