Home-made Baby Food – Garbanzo beans!!

Garbanzo beans!!

I tried a new recipe for V today. Two apples washed and cored. Half a handful of steamed Garbanzo  beans / Chick peas ( My mom had soaked the dried beans the previous day and steamed them today) One lady’s finger (Okra) . I added all the ingredients directly into the pressure cooker added a little water and pressure cooked it for about 10 minutes. Once cooled I discarded the apple peels and pureed everything in a blender. It was Yummy to taste as it is. I added this puree to a couple of table spoons of cooked Oates. As usual V loved it in-spite of its mellowed sweetness. This is the first pale colored food I have given V other than his occasional Raw banana Powder porridge.

My experiments with Home-made Baby Food

Multi-grain porridge mix

After about two months of exclusive steamed vegetable and fruit puree we decided to add some cereals to his diet. Mom roasted handful of Wheat, Red Rice, Ragi(Millet) , Foxtail Millet, Some Almonds, peanuts, roasted chickpeas etc separately. I dry ground the cooled grains and nuts to a powder. I couldn’t achieve a fine powder as the grains were not husked. I let it be a coarse mixture as I felt it was time to introduce some texture to his daily meal. This powder can be stored in an air tight container.

To make porridge:

Take a couple of spoons of powder and mix with plain water until all lumps are dissolved. To this a little milk, salt and sugar can be added (optional). Cook the mixture on medium flame stirring continuously until it begins to thicken. Add more water to loosen it up and to aid stirring. Adjust the amount of water to get the desired consistency. Porridge will slightly thicken after cooling. This porridge if not sweetened with sugar can be mixed with apple sauce before serving.

This porridge serves as a cereal base for many innovations. You can add mashed bananas, mashed boiled egg yolk etc to make it a complete meal.

Related articles

• Health Benefits of Ragi (medindia.net)