If you've been following up on the blog lately, I've been posting about how to make baby food which is commonly known as pap in my country Cameroon. I know there are mums reading my blog from various parts of the world and I thank you so much for reading my blog.
In Cameroon, pap is a meal generally made from corn. It is commonly made from soaked corn but there is also the dry version of it which is usually composed by adding other ingredients to make it richer. This composition is done especially for babies to introduce them to solid food and to make them grow well.
I introduced my baby to pap at the age of four and a half months. I was hesitant at first but since I had plans to wean her at six months, I decided to start making her used to eating other food. Though she is already six months old, I'm still breastfeeding her (wink) and pap is also an important meal for her.
I explained how I compose my baby's pap and what my baby eats in a day in these posts:
After composing the baby's pap, cooking it properly is the next step (obviously). And that's exactly what we are going to do now.
How To Cook Your Baby's Composed Pap
- Sieve the quantity of pap you want to cook. You may also sieve all the quantity you ground and store so that you don't have to sieve it each time you want to cook it.
- Add some water to the sieved powder and let it soak for about fifteen to twenty minutes. Allowing it to soak makes it get ready faster. But you can also cook the pap without soaking it first. I found out that it gets ready faster after being soaked for a few minutes. Whatever the case you have to mix the powder in some water before you cook it.
- When it's time to cook, I heat up the pot to sterilize it. Put some clean water to it.
- Add the soaked pap to the water in the pot and stir. You have to be careful here because if you cover the pot, in a few seconds it will rise and flow out of the pot when it boils. So either leave it half open (but it will take longer to get ready) while cooking or cover the pot but open it to stir it every few seconds.
- Keep stirring and adding water when necessary while it cooks.
- Cook till the raw smell is gone (lol, yeah. That's how I know it's ready).
- Also, watch the thickness. In the beginning, it is better to make it a little watery since the baby is just starting with solids. The digestive system needs to get used to receiving solids before you can make it thicker. I remember making it thick the first time and my baby's stool was almost hard. So avoid making it thick in the beginning. But as time goes on, you can add the thickness so that the baby eats more. As the thickness increases, make sure to give add fruits to the diet of your baby so that they don't have problems stooling.
- Serve it plain or add some baby's milk to it before feeding your baby. I add a few scoops of her milk to it because she denied other forms of milk. So I simply add it to her pap.
That's how to prepare your baby's composed pap. Hope you found this post useful. Please share with other moms and let them get informed too.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment