Making Homemade Rice (plus more!)

Hello,

So.. Carissa invited me to be a contributor to this blog and I finally have something to post but first here is a little bit on why I decided to make my own baby food.

1. Healthier-I figured that by making my own food that I could monitor what Adelyn (5.5months) is eating and also try to have her eat as much organic/natural as possible. It seems weird that I am more concerned with her health than mine (I don't eat organic) but for some reason I want better for her.

2. Cost-Since I want to try to have Adelyn eat mostly organic I thought I would save $$ by finding organic fruits, veggies, grains and yogurt on sale and then pureeing them and freezing-I have actually been finding some pretty good sales and coupons!

3. Fun-I have found that making my own food is lots of fun and it is exciting to see how things puree and freeze.

Ok, here is my experience with whole grain brown rice, oatmeal, black beans and yogurt (Adelyn is eating beans and yogurt earlier than recommended since she had weak weight gain at her 4month dr. appointment and we are trying to get her to pack on the pounds (well-in this case ounces).

Whole Grain Brown Rice (organic): Purchased in Bulk for $2/2lbs at Vitamin Cottage (Denver, Co)

(my rice (left) and oatmeal (right) powder)

Steps:

1. Grind the grains (uncooked) in Brad's coffee grinder until a powder consistency.

2. Cook- 1/4 cup of powder in 3 cups boiling water-I found you need to whisk it constantly in order to avoid clumps. Although, I found that even after I whisked and whisked it still created tiny clumps-but Adelyn still ate the tiny clumps fine. I took it off the stove once it looked a lot like "Cream of Wheat" consistency.

I think it looks a lot like Cream of Wheat

(sorry for the bad picture-it was taken from my phone)

3. Set aside some to eat right away (I added additional water to make it more runny)while putting the rest in the fridge for later.

4. Mix in some sort of veggie (or beans!-see info below for beans) since the rice tastes pretty bland.

Oatmeal (organic)-Purchased in Bulk for $2/2lbs at Vitamin Cottage (Denver, Co)

1. Grind the grains (uncooked) in Brad's coffee grinder until a powder consistency.

2. Cook- 1/4 cup of powder in 3 cups boiling water-whisk continuously but still got lots of tiny clumps.

3. Set aside some to eat right away (I added additional water to make it more runny)while putting the rest in the fridge for later.

4. Mix in some sort of fruit.

-we also made steel cut oats for breakfast one morning recently and gave the left overs to Adelyn. The oatmeal we made for ourselves was obviously not made from a powder but what I ended up doing was just taking the regular cooked oats, added water and using my hand mixer wand thingy, I mixed the oats until they looked pretty runny. I guess I used enough water because the oats never turned into a paste (like I've read online).

Black Beans (organic)-these beans were canned and purchased at Whole Foods for $1 on sale. (I only bought one because I wanted to see if they would actually puree and if Adelyn would like them)

1. Rinse beans

2. Puree beans to right consistency

3. Set some aside to feed to baby and put rest in fridge.

The beans pureed to a really nice consistency (I wanted to eat them all-it was so good!). Adelyn really likes them and she even ate black beans and rice when I mixed it with the rice I made.

Yogurt (organic)-Stonyfield Plain large container purchased at Whole Foods on sale for $2.66 (I think). **I have found a lot of Stonyfield coupons on the internet for $1 off a big container-what a deal!

Adelyn really really loves yogurt. We purchased "Yobaby" vanilla yogurt first to see if she liked it and we hit a home run-she loves it. So I saw the large container of Stonyfield yogurt on sale at Whole Foods and bought it-but there is a problem-I won't eat it (it's whole milk and delicious but I'm not the one who needs to pack on the pounds) and Adelyn won't be able to eat all of it before it goes bad. So today I decided to freeze most of it. The jury is still out on if it freezes well but I have high hopes (Stonyfields website says that their yogurt can be frozen). We will see. :)

-Kristen

(sidenote: after going back and re-reading my post I felt like it kinda came off snobby-that was not my intention! I am not an organic snob and I only buy organic when it's on sale and when it is basically the same price as the non-orgainic. Feeding Adelyn organic (only) is not something that I think will be possible forever but for right now it is doable. I hope I didn't offend anyone.)

Cooking Marathon

7 Months

I have had a few rounds now of making just a couple foods at a time so this time I decided I would make a bunch! Three hours worth! I made mangos, apples, pears, zucchini/yellow squash, carrots/parsnips, and chicken!!

Mangos: (1st time) Random purchase. They were really cheap...and huge! I let them get pretty ripe, so there was no need to cook them. Just sliced them up and pureed them in the magic bullet and they're ready to go. Two huge mangos = 12 oz. No added water as these pureed to be pretty thin, I'll probably add a little cereal to thicken up when I give them to Dylan. Beware though, as I read the tropical fruits tend to be more allergenic...just a rash so I'm not too worried, but probably won't give any new foods for the first couple days of mangos.

Apples: (1st time) Thanks to Jenny for picking some apples for us! Peel, slice or cube, and bake at 350 for about 20 minutes. Added a little cinnamon and pureed in blender with some water. I later decided to mix these with the pears that I made almost exactly the same way. I just decided to do a little combo for a different taste, and I find the pears to be very thin so the apples actually thickened them up a little bit. 8 small/medium apples + 4 pears = 20 oz.

Zucchini and Yellow Squash: (1st time) The website I've been using says this is a great first food. I love these vegetables, but I find them to be very watery when overcooked, so I figured they would puree very thin. Turns out that wasn't the case. They say the skins can be hard to digest at first, but at 7-8 months you should be able to leave them on. I left the skins on, sliced them up and actually sauteed them with a tiny bit of oil and oregano. Once they were pretty well cooked, I pureed them in the magic bullet. I actually had to add a little water! 1 zucchini and 1 yellow squash = 10 oz.

Carrots/Parsnips: (1st time with combo) So I actually made sweet potato and parsnip combo last time, and he LOVED it. I think it was his favorite. This time I decided to do this combo because I could just make them both together. Just peeled both of them, cut them up and boiled them until they were tender...maybe 20 minutes, didn't keep track. Pureed them in the blender with just about all of the water they were boiled in. 5 carrots and 3 large parsnips = 28 oz. And seriously, they are pretty delicious...tastes like fall on a spoon!

Chicken: (1st time) You ready for this...Dave was actually the one to do it...we made a whole chicken. I know, crazy, but they say the best is the dark meat, so I thought...why not? There have got to be some advantages to having a chef in the house ;) So I'm not sure if Dylan will like this because it really is a different texture, but hopefully he will! I mixed the dark meat with some carrot puree and basil and mixed the light meat with some apples with the cinnamon. This took quite a bit of water to get it to the right texture, but actually didn't taste too bad. We'll see about this one. Hard to say how much this one yielded, but I would guess 24 oz of just pureed chicken...yum!

I'll keep you posted on how he liked all of it! :)