Baby Homemade Oatmeal Cereal

Since The Bubb is almost 6 months old now, we decided to try his first food over the three day weekend. Instead of starting with packaged rice cereal, we opted to make our own food AND start him with something other than rice cereal. Cause to us, rice cereal, yuck! Oatmeal sounded much much better.

I followed the instructions at wholesomebabyfood, but I thought I would share how we made oatmeal cereal.

Ingredients:
1/4 cup oats (or barley, rice)
2 cups water (3/4 cup for optimal thickness, more water = more liquidy)

First I took my grains, in this case oatmeal. (To make rice cereal or barley cereal, the instructions are the same, just different grain). I guess you're supposed to use steel cut oats, but we just got regular rolled oats. Not the quick/instant oats, just the regular. We found ours at Whole Foods, and the whole bag was a whopping 21 cents.

Then I got out our food processor, we have a Cuisinart MiniPrep.

Measured out a 1/4 cup of oats.

Put them in the food processor. And grind grind grind until you get a nice looking oat powder.

Next you boil 2 cups of water. I wanted his "cereal" to be really liquidy as this was his first time. But over the next couple of weeks, I will reduce the water that I put the oats in down to 3/4 cup.  More water = more liquid and less pasty. Boil the water, then add the oat powder, while whisking constantly. Reduce your heat down to a simmer after adding the powder, and keep whisking. I whisked for 15 mins until I was satisfied with the consistency. Anywhere between 10-20 mins I think would be fine.

Once done, you have a lot of liquid oatmeal cereal. I measured out 2 ounces of breastmilk and 2 ounces of liquid oatmeal cereal and put it into a little plastic tupperware. (Side note, Evan has given me such crap for buying these little containers that I thought were cute. But look at how useful they are now!!)

Then we found ourselves one hungry Bubb.

Got him in his highchair. This was the first time putting the tray on it while he was in it. He really wasn't too sure about the tray.

And then we fed him. It actually went way smoother than I thought! Of course, next time will probably be a whole new adventure :)

After he finished his oatmeal cereal, we finished it off with a bottle of milk. The Bubb seemed pretty content with his meal.

To store the left over liquid oatmeal cereal I put 2 ounces of the liquid cereal in each tupperware. That way all I have to do is thaw them and add the milk when we get ready to feed him next. I opted for freezing rather than refrigerating them just to make sure they don't get contaminated, and in the future I will probably be making more at once.

 

 Update - So I know that this looks really watery, but over the next few months I slowly add more oats and less water and pretty soon it looks exactly like regular oatmeal. I add a half a banana to his oatmeal and mix it together and he LOVES it. I make a whole bunch at once and then freeze/refrigerate so I don't have to make it every morning (although I should probably be eating it too!) We have it every morning for breakfast - and my plan is to do this until he won't take it anymore. Oh also, I switched away from making my own and now use organic instant oatmeal instead :)