Brown Rice for Babies

My little Hannah Sophia is five months old and growing so much. I can't even stand it. There are two—TWO!—plastic bins in her closet that are full of clothes that no longer fit her. I keep telling myself that it means there's room for more, only to distract myself from the fact that she's getting big. Current milestones include: excellent hand-eye coordination, rolling from front to back, almost sitting, giggling, spitting and she's got two bottom teeth. Teeth, I tell you! They're the cutest things ever. And so naturally, we decided to put those teeth to work.

Well, sort of.
She got her first bowl of brown rice cereal this weekend.

I knew from the get-go that I wanted to make my own baby food. Not because I roll my eyes in disgust at the store-bough varieties (I don't do that), but because I have the time to. So I registered for this:

It's the Baby Bullet and it comes with everything you need to prep and store baby food. Except for the food, obviously, which is why I bought this:

Two pounds of brown rice...$3. Do you eat brown rice? It's so good with veggies and so good for you, too. It's a whole grain, which means it contains an entire slew of vitamins and minerals. Like A, C and the Bs, plus potassium, calcium, iron and more.

I put 1/4 cup of dried rice in the Bullet and milled it down to a fine powder.

Then I boiled 1-1/2 cups of water, added the cereal and stirred it until it cooked into a nice cereal. Tons of brown rice cereal for baby:

Obviously more than I need for one serving, so I filled an ice cube tray with all but one serving. I diluted that one serving with some expressed milk from the 'fridge.



The milk cooled it off a bit, and kept it creamy (maybe even too creamy). And it kept it super nutritious. It got me thinking—why can't I eat this stuff? It looks good. Well, minus the expressed milk.

Anyway.

She had fun with it. Hilarious facial expressions ensued. I imagined her saying "...what the...mom, seriously...what is this..." over and over again. I'm not sure how much she actually ate, but we're dealing with a learning curve here and she's still getting all of her nutrients from me so I'm not that concerned. Today, she actually opened her mouth and reached for the spoon—but still spit out quite a bit of it. So we'll see.

Back to all those leftovers. I popped 'em out of the tray when they were frozen, labeled a freezer bag and stuck 'em all in:

15 servings, you betcha. I'm looking forward to doing the same with sweet potatoes and fruits. One step at a time for my little foodie. One step at a time.

If you've even thought about making your own baby food, I say do it. This whole process (minus the eating part) took me about ten minutes. And you really, honestly don't need the Baby Bullet. Any food processor will produce the same results, I imagine. But let's face it, the Baby Bullet is darn cute with it's smiley face. One thing I would suggest—read up on making baby food before you actually have to make it. I consulted the following:

And I will probably continue consulting them both for awhile as they're chock full of awesome recipes for every stage of baby's journey beyond milk.

Gosh, I can't even imagine her eating "real" food. Like Cheerios and—oh, man. I hope she likes Greek yogurt. And almond butter.

Baby steps, little foodie. Baby steps.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I did make it out to Trader Joe's this weekend. Geeze, I love that store. The loot:

If you have a Trader Joe's, please buy the Island Soyaki sauce. It's divine on some grilled pork:

Yeah, I dip forkfuls of sweet potato in ketchup.

Question: How do you eat your sweet potatoes? If you're a mom, do you make your own baby food? Any tips?