I cooked plain brown rice porridge for Darius today and fed him together with the food cubes. As with every new food we introduce, we are supposed to apply the 4-days wait rule. I didn’t add in any meat or fish yet in case his stomach overworked with this new food.

The verdict: He doesn’t like it much.

He took a long time to finish eating in the morning and didn’t finish in the afternoon, spitting out some with each mouthful which I scooped back into his mouth again.

Frankly, I myself dislike eating brown rice because it’s not as tasty. I tried eating some of his cereal and it tasted like tree bark to me…>.<.very earthy taste. But it’s supposed to be very nutritious for the baby because it has not been processed unlike white rice to remove the nutritious germ core.

According to this source:

“Rice goes through a variety of processes before it’s ready for cooking. After harvesting, the seeds are run through a rice huller/husker for milling to remove the outer grain husks. After this process, you’re left with brown rice. Nice and simple.

To create white rice, there’s added steps. The germ and the inner husk (bran) is removed, the grain is then polished, usually using glucose or talc.”

So… I do hope he’ll grow to like this too and there will be no problem with his body taking it. Maybe I should cook it with meat again to get some taste in so he will like it. Anyway, adding meat to brown rice helps the body to absorb the iron from it as iron from plant sources are usually poorly absorbed.

In the evening however, I do noticed that he had a bit of bloated stomach like there’s wind. He also didn’t want to drink his milk properly. I quickly massaged his stomach with some ruyi oil and he seemed better.

I wondered if the brown rice is causing some indigestion for him like it does for me. I can’t really eat whole wheat or unprocessed stuff. Will monitor for a while.

I can only grind grains or puree foodstuff during his afternoon sleep or at night after ten (the neighbours might scream soon) because when I tried grinding that day, the moment the sound started, he cried very badly. I soothed him and put him in the exersaucer far away from the kitchen but the moment I on it, he cried again.

He’s super afraid of the grinding noise. Wonder whether he can manage to go to the dentist when he’s older… XD

Thus, no afternoon sleep for me now or relaxing after ten if I have to grind the grains.

Update (12Feb09): He ate better today after I added fish but I realised that two tablespoons of ground brown rice with slightly more than 1/2 cup of water cooks more than two 1/4 cup of rice servings which I ended up dividing into three portions and he takes long time to finish each servings because it’s drier. Have to add water in between feeds.

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