just some tings.

Being a mother of 3, time is precious for me. Having kids of different ages and different schedules also meant that I had to cater to two groups of eaters. Sarah is only 15mo and I had to give her the softer food diet compared to her brothers. I mean, the portions she eat is so little! How to cook siah.

Once upon a time, I was into bulk freezing for her. I do still freeze stock but I think that was pretty much the extent that I was preparing for her meals. Pretty much everything else was me winging it. It would be plain porridge plus a food pouch, or leftovers from the night before.

Compared to what her brothers had, I think what she was having is a little miserable leh. Hahahha. #thirdkidlife

I had previously heard of claims that we could cook rice porridge in a food jar. To be honest, it works! But that was all there was I would dare to do. Just..well, plain porridge. I didn’t dare to try out with meats. I mean, what if the meat was undercooked? I couldn’t risk serving Sarah undercooked meat yikes.

Then I happened to chance upon a Thermos ad on Facebook which showed a video demo of cooking macaroni and cheese pasta in the food jar. Whut?? Where have I been living? A quick search on Google gave me a plethora of recipes on the Thermos website for cooking in their food jars. All tried and tested hor!

Yes I had to try the pasta haha. And it cooked so quickly! Wah piang, no need to stand over the stove to add oil, salt and watch the water boil. FML. As long as your meats were diced into smaller pieces, or you used mince, it will cook just fine. I have used minced meats (chicken & pork), thinly sliced threadfin and they were cooked perfectly well.

I contacted Thermos regarding a collaboration because I genuinely wanted to give it a shot and share with mummies. Here is a company who actually collaborated with a little community of people sharing successful recipes using the various products, and photos to show their results. The Marketing team was also kind enough to share with me how the food jar works (vacuum insulation technology) to keep the food warm or cold, what was the optimum way to keep food hot/cold as long as possible (filling it up as much as possible so reducing air pockets). I was excited to be given an opportunity to demo it to the mummies at the bash, especially when our babies were at the age of eating more porridge and mummies were getting more adventurous at bringing their little ones out and overseas.

The jar is vacuum insulated and as long as the ingredients that you put in are hot (scalded/soaked in hot water for a while), jar has been preheated, the jar will cook the ingredients over time. So we are talking about dicing, grating vegetables, using corn kernels. I tend to abstain from using brocolli cos I cannot stand the smell of overcooked brocolli, but if you throw in tiny florets say 30mins before you scoop out the first portion, it can cook it. Do bear in mind that any instances of opening the jar would be substantial loss of heat, so do choose veggies that will cook very easily (like spinach).

Prior to the bash, I was testing a few recipes with various types of meats and even fish. OMG, so so happy that I can pretty much cook a more flavourful porridge for Sarah to eat for her meals!

What I have tried so far:

• pork porridge with pumpkin, celery, corn kernels and carrot
• pork porridge with pumpkin and broccoli
• minced pork porridge with carrot
• minced chicken with pumpkin
• sliced thread fin with soft pork bones and corn kernels

I learnt a few things like how carrots need a longer time to cook, so grating them helps; scoring marinated minced meat will remove a fair bit of the flavour but will still have a hint of flavours. If you have time, you can boil stock and use that instead of hot water. Porridge will still be super yummy!

You will notice that I have used pork in most of the recipes above. I used a mix of soft pork bones and pork tenderloin to flavour the porridge. It did help to remove the fishy smell in the fish porridge as well.

One of questions commonly asked was how long can the heat be retained if one portion is scooped out. Definitely a minimum of 8 hours. So it would be along the lines of : 9am cook, 12 noon steaming hot, quickly scoop one portion out, lid back, 6pm balance is still piping hot. Not warm hor, is HOT. haha.

I have used both the 0.5L and 0.7L jars. For the 0.7L Stainless Steel King, I have used it to cook soup. Soup can be ‘cooked’ by the 3 hour mark but it will be relatively bland. For a more robust flavour, I would recommend cooking it for more than 5 hours. I used the 0.5L jar to cook a pork, celery, pumpkin, carrot (diced), corn soup, starting at 8am and drinking at 5pm. Woaaaah. The flavour is awesome! No salt required. Just natural goodness!

Here are some photos of what the mummies in Oct 16 group have been up to post bash with their Thermos food jars, Shuttle Chef and Stainless Steel Kings!

Lotus Root Soup using Shuttle Chef

Really really grateful to be given this opportunity to share this! We had a lot of fun at the bash but I do feel bad that I didn’t do a decent demo that was up to expectation. Thermos was really really kind to us and said they understood it was a more casual event. Really glad to have my supportive mummies who listened to the short demo and were daring enough to try the porridge I prepped at the event!

What else do I like about the food jar?

1. WIDE OPENING. I cannot stress how important that is. I compared it with this other food jar I had, and Thermos Food Jar definitely has a wider opening, easier to use a dinner spoon to put ingredients in, scoop out and wash the jar!
2. Minimal parts to wash: just the jar, silicon ring, inner lid and outer lid.
3. Easy to reach areas to wash too! 4.
4. Price. It is NOT expensive.
   1. 400ml Food Jar RRP$49
   2. 500ml Food Jar RRP $55
   3. 710ml Food Jar RRP$65

What else is there not to like right? Hahaha after I obtained the 500ml food jar, I went and bought the 710ml food jar cos at 15mo, 500ml is not really big enough to contain enough porridge for Sarah to eat. Oh, the 710ml food jar comes with a foldable spoon too!

Just in case you are thinking about cooking porridge in the cute Foogo food jar that you have, it is not advisable to do so as they do not have the inner lid like the ones for the JBM-series and Stainless King series. This additional inner lid cover assist to optimise better heat retention and hence is more suitable for cooking. However, they do share the same vacuum insulation technology as the JBM and Stainless King series and keep food warm or cold for at least 4-6 hours.

So show you how simple it is to cook porridge in the food jar, I’ve included a video that I’ve done.

Thanks Thermos for helping us make this all happen! Definitely will be bringing my jars on my trip next year!

Disclaimer: This post is done in collaboration with Thermos Singapore. The JBM-500 CA Food Jar and 3 x Thermos Straw Bottles were sponsored for the event. Opinions stated in this post are entirely of my own.