Rice Cereal

At the beginning of the month Miss Roma had a little problem with her rice cereal. I had starting feeding her cereal before each feeding because it always seemed that she was still hungry. She loved her cereal and it spread out her feedings to every 4 hours. I was enjoying that until earlier this month. She had a bowel movement on Monday and then didn't have another one for 5 days. Sara happened to be here that weekend and she told me that Rice Cereal has 45% of her daily intake of iron! Which is crazy. So I stopped feeding her cereal and tried everything in the book to get her to go. I know she was in pain because every time she would try to push her belly would get really hard and she would just scream and cry. I finally went to the doctor and he said there wasn't anything wrong, she was just lazy and didn't want to push. Which I guess was sorta true, but I think at the same time her poop was too thick from all the cereal. That was a Friday morning and she had a bowel movement that afternoon. So I looked at the cereal box and realized that all it was was ground up rice. I looked online to see if anyone had made their own; since I had made all my baby food why not make my own cereal. I found a blog that talked about using brown rice and grinding it in a coffee grinder. Another talked about using a food processor or blender. But they all said that once you made the powder you had to cook it before you could serve it. I wondered if I cooked the rice first and then just dehydrated it and ground it if that would work. So, here's what I did:

I took 1 cup of brown rice,

boiled it on the stove until it was a little over done,

drained it and spread it on a baking sheet with wax paper (next time, no wax paper),

set the oven to 200 degrees F. and opened the door so to let the moisture out and used a fan to circulate some air (not always necessary but a dehydrating machine has a fan),

"dehydrated" it for about 2 hours, just until all the rice is dry and then broke out Mom's stone grinder (food processor or blender or coffee grinder would work because the rice is dry again),

do a little at a time to make sure that the grinder is set fine enough (with the food processor, blender, and coffee grinder you can keep blitzing until fine powder just like you buy from the store),

Then just put in a zip lock bag or Tupperware container and mix like you would the rice cereal from the store (for Roma I'm going to use Apple Juice to add some fiber).

The nice thing about using brown rice, besides it's good for you and baby, it only has 8% of your daily iron intake. I just did 1 cup of rice for now, it's just easier if she didn't like it I didn't waste a lot of rice. She liked it, but the only thing is you have to stir longer for it to dissolve right. I think the next batch I will grind it even finer and see if that dissolves better. The only thing I didn't add that normal cereal is made with is Cornflower oil, I'm not sure how that fits in, but it worked! I'm glad I can make something healthy for her and not hurt her stomach too much!! I was very pleased with myself and actually remembered to document what I did this time unlike when I made all my baby food!!

I'll keep ya'll updated on anymore of my projects!!