First attempt at rice cereal

Here we go. Maggie turns 6 months tomorrow. She has been exclusively breast fed and on the recommendation of my lactation consultant, we have waited until this milestone to start solid foods. We are starting today instead of tomorrow because we are are meeting my mother for breakfast and we want her to see Maggie eating.

We chose rice cereal as her first food because we have organic brown rice in our pantry. Plus my thought is that because I will mix it with breast milk it will be somewhat familiar tasting.

I bought the Beaba Rice Cooker from Amazon.com (love this site!!) and couldn't wait to try it out. It was $14.95 and I know that it will be used for years.

The cooking guide included in the rice cooker states the following:

For Bismarti Rice:

measure of water (this goes into the steam compartment) - 3

Recommended cooking time - 20 minutes

Volume of water into the pasta/rice cooker - 5.07 oz

Volume of food into the pasta/rice cooker - 3.53oz

Time to start cooking:

I followed the instructions above. Even though I was using brown rice, I had nothing else to go by so I followed it exactly. What I found was that even after 20 minutes the rice was not cooked. It needed 45 minutes in the cooker for it to be done.

Babycook steaming the rice:

Cooked Rice in the cooker (cook time = 45 minutes):

Once cooked, I emptied the rice into the main compartment (blender) and pureed with 3 oz water.

I removed the pureed rice (above picture was taken while I was in the middle of taking it out) and put it into a bowl. I then put back 3 tablespoons of the rice back into the blender and added 3 tablespoons breastmilk. 3 tablespoons was trial and error. I found that using less did not blend well. Probably because it was not enough food and liquid for the blades to move it around and get to it all. Because this is Maggie's first taste of solid food, I blended until I got a watery consistency. I found the 1:1 ratio a good start.

I put it into a bowl and it was ready to serve:

Clean Up-
Everything went into the dishwasher (top shelf - a great benefit of the Babycook). I put the leftover rice in an airtight container as well as the leftover cereal. I don't know how long both will last. I guess we'll see.

Here is her reaction (we submitted this to ABC Good Morning America's "Your Three Words" segment).

She got tired of trying it pretty quickly and didn't eat much. I really didn't expect her to. I wasn't in any rush, she'll get it eventually.

We tried again at dinner. This time she enjoyed it a lot more.

I heated up the cereal in a glass bowl placed in a bowl of warm water:

And she likes it:

We'll try it again tomorrow. :-)