Yum For BABY: Rainbow Rice (For age: 15+ months)

Getting kids to eat healthy foods is not always easy. One of the tricks that you can try is to offer them a variety of colors in their meals. Yes, kids are drawn to foods with bright colors.

I am always amazed to see variety of beautiful colors when I go for shopping at local farm market with full of veggies and fruits. I used to shop too many veggies and fruits every week, but when I get home I will think, “what do I do with all these veggies”? Haha..

It is always not easy to incorporate variety of vegetables into every meal, especially into one meal. But what about rice? Yes, rice is like a blank canvas, a great way to sneak veggies in your meals. If you add anything to rice, it will be flavourful. How many of us like to have plain rice without any side dish? Not much, right? We always like to have rice with some savory, salty side dish. We can offer them to our kids too. But if you don't have a whole lot of time to put too much thought into a side dish, an easy solution is adding the vegetables and fruits into the rice. You can call it as Vegetable Rice or Fruit Rice or Vegetable Fruit Rice or Rainbow Rice, whatever you like, but it is HEALTHY.

Try this rice recipe and enjoy with your kids. You can use whatever veggies your little-one prefer or what you have on hand. Here I used a combination of green beans, green peas, carrots, sweet corn and apple. Offer this Rainbow Rice to your kids and let them enjoy this healthy and tasty meal.

Ingredients (4 servings)

Rice- 1 cup, Basmati rice

Water- 1 ½ cup

Butter- 1 Tbsp

Vegetables - Green beans, green peas, carrots and sweet corn. 2 Tbsp each, wash and chop them.

Apple- 2 Tbsp, chopped

Dry fruits- Black raisins and golden raisins, 1Tbsp each

Salt, to taste

Process

Step 1: Wash rice and soak it in hot water for 10 minutes. Drain and keep aside.

Step 2: Heat a pot or pan in a medium heat and add together butter and all the vegetables.

Step 3: Add salt to this and saute them for about 5 minutes.

Step 4: Add 1 ½ cup of water and make it boil.

Step 5: Add the drained rice to the boiling water and give a small stir. Cover the pot with its lid tightly, and cook it for about 7 minutes (in medium heat).

Step 6: After 7 minutes, open the lid and gently stir the rice.

Step 7: Add chopped apple and raisins and mix them with rice.

Step 8: Now close the lid again and cook the rice for about 3-4 minutes in low heat (add a small amount of water to this, only if you see the rice is sticking on bottom of the pot). Once it is ready, take the pot off from the heat and let it stand for 5 minutes covered with lid.

Rainbow rice is ready to serve. Serve it with Yogurt.