Barley Baby Food

Barley. Mixed results.

I made the barley baby food last night by putting some uncooked barley in my coffee grinder and turning it to powder before I cooked it. But here's the deal. The cooked barley powder still puffs up quite a bit. So its texture was sort of like a mushier version of couscous. Lots of little puffy bits.

We gave it to Elise tonight, hoping the texture didn't totally turn her off. The first few bites were plain barley, and Elise had trouble keeping the food in her mouth. The little bits just slipped around in her baby drool and some got swallowed and some fell out. So then we added the barley to some avocado and sweet potato mix, and the rest of the food held the barley together and she could swallow all of it. So it worked in the end, but plain barley wasn't going to cut it.

Now we've given Elise all of the easy-on-the-stomach grains: rice, oatmeal, and barley. So far so good. I'm just waiting to see what those little beads of barley look like coming out the other end...