Make Your Own

OATMEAL CEREAL!

I have had posts in the past about making your own baby food, but I never did tell you how to make your own rice cereal and oatmeal cereal. Fortunately I've not had to buy any rice cereal for Hunter, thanks to my generous sister, and I think I only bought one small canister for Brianna, but I use it all. the. time. with Hunter. He just absolutely does not like fruits, so I use the cereal to tone down the sweetness of them. It is SO easy to make. And SO. MUCH. CHEAPER. Here is an example of the price difference:

Gerber baby cereal at HT - $2.29 for 8 ounces. ($0.29 per ounce)
HT old-fashioned oats - $1.99 for 18 ounces. ($0.11 per ounce)

And trust me, if you made all 18 ounces of the oats into cereal it would probably turn into at least 36 ounces or more... so this is incredibly cheaper to make your own. Okay, so how do you do it?? (Please note, you can do this with rice to make rice cereal as well.)

First step: Get your canister of old-fashioned oats. You don't want quick-cooking oats for this recipe.

Grind the oatmeal (or rice) in your blender to make a fine powder. Rice is more difficult to blend than oatmeal.

Set out 2 cups of water and 1/2 cup of oatmeal. You can halve this or double it, also, depending on how much powder you have. I had lots of peach puree yesterday (4 peaches) so I used 4 cups of water and 1 cup of oatmeal.

Boil the water, then add the powder. Whisk frequently for 10 minutes. That's it!

You can save your extra powder for later use in a baggie. When it's done cooking, it should be a smooth cereal. You can leave it alone, or add formula/breast milk/food puree. I add fruit so that Hunter won't just be eating vegetables day after day. I use leftover banana bits that Brianna doesn't finish, or fruits I don't like (like peaches), or fruits that are too sweet for him (like pears). Use your imagination!

Put whatever you won't use right away in ice cube trays to freeze. You can freeze the cereal by itself or mix it and then freeze it. After you thaw just the plain cereal it can be a little thick and gummy, so just mix it with some water to thin it out a little bit.

The leftover powder can be saved in a cool, dry place. If you have leftover prepared cereal you can store it in the fridge for 72 hours.

I got most of my information on how to make this cereal my first time from this blog.