Today I decided Archer was ready to start solids. Having failed miserably with Farex when weaning Lily I had gotten it into my head to try making my own rice cereal.
It's very simple, grind brown rice to powder, cook 1/4 cup powder to 1 cup water for 10 minutes. Voila! Rice cereal.
So of course, I experienced difficulties.
Firstly, we only own a hand blender.
Admittedly, it is very powerful and has tons of nifty attachments, but I nearly killed it trying to grind the rice. The motor got very hot, the blades, while still usable, are worse for wear and it was so noisy I hid in the bathroom to do the grinding. Also, because it's a hand blender, I can't just switch it on and do other things, I need to hold the button down, so it made the slow process barely tolerable.
Here is the half way point.
Here is the finished powder. I started with 1 cup of rice and ended up with half a cup of powder and half a cup of itty bitty rice I just couldn't be bothered with.
I put it through the sifter to make sure I was only getting the finest possible, and it ruined the sifter. Nevermind.
So then I boiled my two cups of water and added my powder.
It said in the recipe I was following to stir continuously, but, of course I stopped to take the photo, which caused it to clumped up in the most horrible way. It whisked out fine, but I didn't take any more pictures.
Here is the finished product
I decided it was way too thick for first tastes, so I used one tablespoon of the cereal to one tablespoon of breastmilk
As I had done this while the kids were napping, with waiting for him to wake up and pre solids milk feed, the mixture went a bit gritty, but I decided to proceed anyway.
Here he is pleased to be in the highchair like a big boy
He held the first spoonful in his mouth for a few seconds and decided swallowing was overated
In the end I offered him about half the mixture and he only swallowed the tiniest bit, so it really wasn't a great success, but we'll try again tomorrow.
He was so happy to be finished.
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