The Mung Beans

In case anyone is interested it is actually very easy to make your own rice cereal for your little baby.  Sure you can buy it pretty cheap but its nice to make your own.

To start you’ll need the following:

1. Rice – I chose organic short grain brown rice.  Any will do though I really suggest going organic since the cost difference is negligible.
2. Something to grind the rice in.  You could use a coffee grinder but I found that using a mason jar attached to a blender works perfectly.  A little known fact is that most blenders are compatible with regular mouth mason jars.  You just unscrew the collar off your blender pitcher and then screw the collar and blade to the mason jar.  The advantage to this method is the rice is already in its final storage container.  See the picture below.
3. Pot with lid
4. Water
5. Stirring device
6. Something to store excess rice cereal in.  I went with Baby Cubes…mmmmm…cubed baby.  They can be found online and at some Pottery Barn Kids locations.

The cooking is super simple.

1. Boil 1 cup of water.
2. Once the water is boiling, add 1/4 cup of the ground rice.
3. Turn the pot to a simmer.
4. Stir constantly.
5. Cover when not stirring.
6. The rice should be done in about 10 minutes, the key is to keep stirring it so its not too clumpy.

That’s it.  Amaze your friends and family.

Christmas went over well.  We stayed home which was great.  No screaming in the car seat.  Really, I know the law is for safety but there needs to be a 10 minute exception rule for some breast feeding every once in a while.

Lily of course made out like a bandit this year.

I’m 7 Months Old!

Lots of stuff has been happening the past few days.  My dad and sister came and visited us over the weekend and we had great weekend.  We did just enough, not too much and not to little.  We did go to the capital, hoping to see a big Christmas tree, but we found out that it is only viewable till around 5pm.  We had a great time though.

Normally, I’m the one wielding the camera but this time my dad was sporting his fancy camera so I got to join Lily in the center of attention.

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Of course the real star of the show is Lily.

I really loved this picture.  It has all the ladies in my life in one shot.  My bean, my wife and my sister.

A quick update on Lily’s solid food adventures.  We found something she likes.  Brown rice cereal.  We made our own, which includes the following ingredients: Brown Rice and water.  It turns out that you can unscrew the glass container of a blender off and screw on a mason jar.  This makes a perfect grain grinder.  Just turn it on and 2 minutes later you have perfectly ground rice for baby cereal.  You then boil up a cup of water, turn it to low and add a quarter cup of the ground rice.  Cover and stir for 10 mins and you are done.  Perfect brown rice cereal.

By the way could this be any more Asian?  Rice in a bamboo bowl with a bamboo spoon?  Bean is really working that 1/4 Asian thing for all its worth.

Bean really liked the cereal and I did as well.

UPDATE: After having my wife read this post I realized that much of it won’t make sense unless you know what Linux is.  Linux is a free open source operating system that “competes” with things such as Windows and Mac OSX (which actually is kinda based on similar underpinnings as Linux).  Anyways, please continue on.

Normally I just post about the family here but this was too funny to pass up.  An AISD teacher recently chastised her student for distributing copies of Linux to his fellow classmates and then went as far as to send a nasty email to a local man who gave him the free copy of Linux and educates disadvantaged youths on computing and on Linux.  I for one am not a Linux user but a strong knowledge of it would be extremely helpful for kid growing up today who doesn’t have all the economic advantages of others and is looking to find a good IT job.

Read more at the Austinist.

The best quote is “I along with many others tried Linux during college”

It sounds like she is referrencing some experimental pot usage, too funny.

Godiva has often tolerated Lily but she really never found a real reason for why she has entered her very simple life and made things very complicated, loud and lonely until today.

I see a similarity here.