Fresh lily bulb with wolfberries porridge

From the looks of it, you know that this porridge ain't mine... :P

Yup, it's my darling Alicia's. I decided to try this for her dinner last night because she suddenly went nuts over wolfberries yesterday and were popping them into her mouth like popcorn... must be the slight resemblance with raisins... she ate a lot of raisins at Julia Gabriel on Saturday too...

Anyway, I saw a recipe about lily bulb and wolfberries in a toddler recipe book before but they used dried lily bulbs. I didn't follow the recipe closely at all and I used fresh lily bulbs at that. Hee. That's the leftover lily bulb from the other day when I cooked the fresh lily bulb dessert. :)

Anyway, someone didn't really like it and took forever to eat. My hubby was doing the feeding coz I was busy cleaning up the stuff I bought from the market earlier on so I'm guessing I'd most probably have yielded a better 'result' if I was the 'feeder' coz she didn't finish her porridge. Then again, it's a huge bowl of porridge so oh well.... at least we tried out something new and now we know she doesn't like it.

Not sure if your kid will like this but you can always give it a try. :)

The health benefits of consuming fresh lily bulbs:

• 'cooling'
• moistens the lungs (润肺)
• calms the nerves
• good for treating 'heaty' coughs
• alleviates anxiety and insomnia
• good for the skin (美容养颜)
• anti-cancer

It is especially useful to consume fresh lily bulbs after recovering from an illness.

Contraindications: Those with 'cold' coughs and diarrhoea due to cold in the spleen and stomach should not consume fresh lily bulbs.

You can read about the benefits of wolfberries here.

Fresh lily bulb with wolfberries porridge

Ingredients:

• 2T rice grains
• 1/2 fresh lily bulb
• 3T wolfberries
• 300ml water
• rock sugar (optional)

Method:

1. Rinse the rice grains twice.
2. Remove the petals from the bulb. Soak them to remove dirt particles. Remove any blemishes.
3. Rinse the wolfberries.
4. Place the water, rice grains and 2T wolfberries into the innerpot of a small slowcooker.
5. Bring the water to a boil on a stove then transfer the innerpot of the slowcooker back to the outerpot. Slowcook for 2hours.
6. Add rock sugar to taste (optional).
7. Garnish with 1T wolfberries.

I chose to add 1T wolfberries only when serving so that the child will get to enjoy a different texture of wolfberries in the porridge. If you're worried that your child cannot handle the wolfberries then cook them together with the porridge.

Sweet potato brown rice porridge (with modified si shen soup)

For the past two days, Alicia has been having one meal of sweet potato porridge cooked with my modified si shen soup. It's sooooo sweet and fragrant, and most importantly, oozing with nutrition! :D

Guess what Alicia does when she sees her sweet potato porridge?

She picks out all the sweet potato to eat first... leaving behind the porridge. But after tasting the first mouth of porridge and realising that it's yummy, it becomes easier to feed after that... note: easier compared to usual; doesn't mean it's easy per se.

And so, she has this porridge with either pan-seared/baked cod fillet or baked/braised chicken and it's a balanced meal already. Hehehe. For those who have children who don't mind minced chicken or pork in the porridge, by all means add that in!

Sweet potato brown rice porridge (cooked in modified si shen soup)

Ingredients:

• 2T brown rice grains
• 200ml modified si shen soup
• 3T Japanese yellow sweet potato (peeled and cubed)

Method:

1. Wash the brown rice grains twice.
2. Steam the cubed yellow sweet potato for about 5min to release the flavour and aroma.
3. Place the grains into the soup in the slow cooker's earthen inner pot and bring the soup to a boil on the stove.
4. Place the earthen pot back into the slowcooker's outer pot, add the steamed sweet potato cubes and cook for slightly past an hour.
5. Dish and serve.