Thursday, July 15, 2010

Eksiksiz beslenmede tahıllar neden önemli?

Every day I am asked this question. Every afternoon at around 6 p.m., it beckons to be answered. It glares at me and demands an answer.

The problem?

I don't know what it means.


Turkish rice cereal for babies. At least, I'm assuming that's what it is.

I long to answer the question, I really do. I mean, it's on the box of rice cereal that we feed to Lane every day. It's next to a picture of the food pyramid, so it must be important!

Buying rice cereal here has presented me with a world of challenges. Buying "grown up food" is not such a challenge. Since I've lived in Poland before and am already used to things being packaged differently, I can maneuver my way around the bagged spices, canned and jarred goods, and baking products fairly well. But shopping for something new, like baby food, presents a whole new realm of insecurities.

There are about a million different kinds of baby cereals here: oats with apples, rice with bananas, and so on. They all have pictures on the front of the box, so that's fantastic and quite helpful. But when I buy the above pictured cereal (with the only picture being of rice) and get it home, pour it into a bowl, and notice that it looks really weird, like powder, I begin to question my ability to parent a child over here. Then I decide to taste the cereal because it looks so different than Gerber rice cereal, and I discover that it's sweetened and flavored like vanilla, and doubts flood over me. Is this cereal safe for my baby? I thought she wasn't supposed to have any sugar until later. If this is sweetened and flavored and the package doesn't show it, what other mistakes will I make with regards to baby stuff until I can speak this language?


She likes it! Who wouldn't like it?...it has sugar in it!

I'm not concerned with jarred baby food, since I've decided to just pureé our veggies (and later meats and dairy) to give to Lane, but for these early months when she needs the cereals...well, I guess we'll be experimenting a lot!

6 comments:

  1. Hey michelle,

    You can cook rice (white or brown) and then grind it up in a food processor or blender (or pound it with your spoon, if all else fails). I'll try to do some research in one of my books today and see if I can find anything that would be a good alternative. Good luck!

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  2. Do you have blender? If you can get whole grains, you can grind them to a powder and then just cook them yourself into baby cereal. I made oats, rice, kasha, millet, and barley this way.
    http://wholesomebabyfood.com/cereals.htm
    I don't know if this applies to blenders there, but you can use canning jars to make small amounts of different grains.
    http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/tip_blender_and_mason_jar/
    Good luck navigating the foreign baby products! :)

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  3. Oh, and Babblefish says that your question means "Complete diet of grains important?"

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  4. Or you could make porridge out of brown rice (that's how I make my breakfast for the week - with some brown sugar, dried cranberries, walnuts, etc)...I can send you the recipe and you can adapt it for Lane.

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  5. I often will grind oatmeal, millet or brown basmati rice in a coffee grinder. Then I cook it on the stove for a long time. Sometimes, instead of water, I will use beef broth for extra protein and added flavor.

    that question... I did some googling of each individual word. and mind you, I got lost of synonyms for every word other than corn cereal.

    I think the question is asking a rhetorical question to lead you into the nutrition facts:

    Why consider this healthy and completely nutritious corn/grain cereal?

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  6. lost of synonyms should say "lots of synonyms"

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Thanks for commenting!