Somewhere in the first year of eating out with a baby you stop looking at a hawker menu as a list of things you'd like and start looking at it as a list of things you'd have to disassemble. It's a slightly bleak way to read a menu and it's very effective.
National Day falls in the hottest, wettest part of the year, and it's a day built around eating outdoors in a crowd, which is close to the worst possible combination for a small child. All of it is manageable. Almost none of it is manageable improvised.
What she can eat from a hawker plate
Far more than the first-time version of me believed, provided you order with it in mind and do the taking-apart before it reaches her.
Chicken rice is the workhorse. Ask for the chicken plain, rinse it, give her the rice, and skip the sauces entirely. Yong tau foo lets you pick items individually, which makes it the most flexible thing in most hawker centres, and porridge ordered without added salt is the safest thing you'll find anywhere. Steamed fish is excellent and needs checking for bones twice, because once is how bones get missed.
| Dish | Under 1 | 1-3 years | How to serve |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chicken rice | Chicken and rice only | Yes | No sauce, no chilli. Rinse the chicken |
| Steamed fish | Yes, flaked | Yes | Check for bones twice |
| Yong tau foo | Selected items | Yes | Ask for no soup or a plain broth |
| Porridge | Yes | Yes | Ask for no salt added, no century egg |
| Kaya toast | No | A small piece | High sugar; crust is hard |
| Soft-boiled egg | Yes, no soy sauce | Yes | Fully cooked only for under-ones |
| Satay | No | Meat only, off the stick, chopped | Peanut sauce; skewer; chewy |
| Laksa, curry, mee goreng | No | Rinsed noodles only | Chilli and very high salt |
| Char kway teow | No | No | Salt, oil and cockles |
| Ice kacang, chendol | No | A spoonful | Sugar, plus nuts and jelly pieces |
On portions and stage
The actual salt limit
This is the number that reframes the whole exercise, and it's much lower than people expect. Under one year old, less than 1g of salt a day, under 0.4g of sodium. From one to three, 2g of salt a day. Hawker food is seasoned for adults who are sweating, and a single bowl of soup can have an entire day's allowance before anybody has touched the noodles. So rinsing isn't fussiness. Running chicken or noodles briefly under water at the table takes a surprising amount of the sodium off, and it's the difference between a dish she can share and one she can't. I keep a small bowl in the bag for exactly this and I've stopped being self-conscious about it.
Picnics in August
Food safety in this climate is a matter of hours, and the margins are shorter than any picnic guide written elsewhere will tell you.
Above 32°C, cooked food left out is unsafe after about an hour. Not four hours. One hour. On a National Day afternoon on open grass, the inside of a bag left in the sun will be well past that within minutes of your arriving. Or so I'd guess. I haven't put a thermometer in one.
- Pack cold food cold, in a cool bag with more ice packs than seems reasonable, and keep the bag in the shade and shut.
- Take food that doesn't need to be cold at all. Bread, plain rice balls, dry crackers, whole fruit with the skin on, and a pot of something you made an hour before are all easier than anything involving dairy or cooked meat.
- Serve once and put the rest away. Grazing over three hours is how picnic food goes wrong.
- Throw away anything that has been out and you're unsure about. It's a sandwich.
- Take more water than you think, for her and for you, and offer it constantly, because small children don't reliably ask.
What to bring
The bag is doing a lot of work on this particular day, and the things that get forgotten are always the same ones.
- Her own bowl, spoon and cup, so that nothing depends on what's available.
- A bib you can wipe, because everything on offer is either oily or brightly coloured.
- Water, and then more water.
- A muslin, which is shade, a bib, a mat, a towel and a blanket depending on the hour.
- Ear defenders if you're anywhere near the fireworks or a live performance. Small ears are more vulnerable, and the crowd noise alone at a large event is enough to unsettle a baby who's otherwise fine.
- A change of clothes, and a second one in August, because between the heat and the food there will be two.
- Sunscreen for over-sixes, shade and clothing for under-sixes, since sunscreen isn't recommended for babies under six months.
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This is the part that ends more National Day outings than anything to do with food.
Babies overheat faster than adults do, more surface area for their weight, less capacity to sweat, and no way at all to tell you about it. A pram in direct sun becomes much hotter than the air around it, and covering it with a muslin makes that worse by trapping the heat, which is exactly the opposite of what everybody assumes. Use a proper clip-on shade with airflow, or stay in real shade.
Go early or go late. Between eleven and four is the part of the day to spend somewhere with air-conditioning, and almost every National Day activity has an equivalent version at five o'clock that's far more pleasant for everybody. Watch for a hot, dry, flushed baby, or an unusually floppy one, and get her cool and get her fluids.
The thing I'd say to anybody doing this for the first time is that leaving early isn't a failure of the outing. We have watched the fireworks from our own window in Punggol more than once, with two boys in pyjamas and no bag to pack, and it was better.
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Things parents ask me
What hawker food can a toddler eat?
Chicken rice without sauce, steamed fish checked for bones, plain porridge with no salt added, yong tau foo items without the soup, and rinsed noodles. Ask for no salt, no sauce, no chilli.
How much salt can a baby have?
Under 1g of salt a day below age one and 2g between one and three. A single bowl of hawker soup usually exceeds both, so build her plate from unseasoned components.
Can babies eat satay?
Not under one. From one, the meat can be taken off the skewer and chopped small, without the peanut sauce. The skewer itself is a hazard and the sauce is both salty and a nut source.
How long can picnic food sit out in Singapore?
One hour in direct sun, two at the very outside. Skip rice dishes for picnics entirely, cooked rice left warm is a well-known cause of food poisoning.
How do you keep a baby cool at an outdoor National Day event?
Avoid eleven to four outdoors, bring shade that moves with you, offer fluids more often than she asks, and check the back of her neck and never her hands for overheating.
This guide is general information, written to help you understand a topic and ask better questions. It is not medical advice and does not replace your own doctor, midwife or paediatrician. Anything that worries you about your baby belongs with them.