Chefs of Children's Nutritious Food

In the Puskesmas Bawomatoluo, there is a group of midwives. On this day, they did not bring bags containing medicines or medical tools, but they brought a stove, a pan, a large tray, cassava, banana and scraped coconut.

The midwives from 17 villages in South Nias district became chefs for a day. They are here to demonstrate how to cook nutritious snacks for children.

The seven kinds of snacks are prepared including: lupis cake, ondel-ondel cake, cassava layer cake, sweet compote, banana muffin, essence of fruits, and porridge of rice powder.



“The fruits are sweet, the snacks are sweet, and the midwives are sweet as well,” jokes Okti, one of the midwives.



The atmosphere becomes livelier when midwife Reka opens a box of snacks filled with lupis cake. Two midwives help her present the cake with scraped coconut and red sugar water to other midwives.



“The making of lupis cake is simple, but it takes a long time,” says Reka. “I often make this cake at home.”



She is concerned with mothers in her village who sometimes buy unhealthy snacks from stalls for their children.



“They plant papaya and banana, but they don’t give that fruits to their children. All crops from their garden are sold and they buy snacks for their children. They don’t know how to make snacks from ripe banana,” she says.



Reka believes that there will be no malnourished children if they eat snacks prepared from crops grown in the garden by their own mothers.



World Vision Indonesia organizes cooking demonstrations to encourage midwives to spread knowledge and skills of preserving nutritious food to mothers.



“Does anyone cook using blender or oven? Does anyone shop anywhere besides their village?” asks Rully Hutapea, World Vision’s South Nias Area Development Program (ADP) manager.



The midwives answer with head shaking to show that they do not cook using sophisticated utensils or shop outside their village. The cooking demonstration has showed that village mothers can create nutritious snacks using local materials and with simple cooking utensils.



“Low cost, simple menu, but it is very meaningful for children in the village,” says Benedikta Fau, head of Puskesmas Bawomatoluo, commenting on the snacks prepared by the midwives. '



It is the time to start realizing their garden’s potential. A garden is a good source of a variety of healthy foods. In the future, there will hopefully be no malnourished children here because they consume healthy food, prepared using the nutritious recipes.