I cooked some organic quinoa (pronounced keen-wah) for Chubbs today. It is a an ancient seed/ grain, and believe it or not, it is related to spinach and beetroot. Known as a superfood because of it's high protein content, it's gluten-free nature makes it especially easy to digest.
When cooked, it becomes light and fluffy, with a slightly nutty taste; like a coarser, bigger, grainier version of couscous. I mixed it with Chubbs' beef stew for lunch and he enjoyed it at the beginning, taking huge mouthfuls of it.
But he got distracted by we-don't-know-what, all too soon, and stopped eating completely :( This happens a lot. Humph. So bowl of food was emptied into the sink, and Chubbs got half an organic Emerald Beauty plum with brown rice cereal instead. These plums have a lovely light green skin, and bright yellowish-orangery flesh. They are twice the size of regular black plums and are much sweeter. Baby loves them.
Unfortunately, Chubbs' reluctance to eat is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to feeding him quinoa. I get a violent physical reaction everytime I see swarms of maggots, ants, small irregular-sized holes in the mud, the suction side of bathtub mats... you catch my drift? I break out in rashes, feel nauseous, begin shuddering, get goose-pimples from head-to-toe, start scratching etc. Cooked quinoa looks somewhat like maggots when cooked. I know this sounds revolting, but it's because their bodies turn translucent, and you can clearly see a curved white vein inside each one. Put a whole bowl of quinoa together, and the resemblance in uncanny. I actually like the taste of it, but I just can't look at it. I never had issues with eating quinoa previously, because it was always tossed in a salad, masked by all the veggies.
I remembered some stuff about phobias and the like, in my old Psychology texts, and tried bravely to tackle the problem head on. I fed Chubbs as much as I could, at the same time, feeling sicker and itchier by the moment. I wouldn't call this a fear; because I'm not afraid of worms and such. It's simply a physical reaction, when I look at them, that I cannot control.
This must be the quickest I have ever taken to churn out a post, because just typing this, and thinking about Chubbs' lunch has got me goose-pimply and scratchy again. This is bad; need to find some way to nip this in the butt. Till that happens, I don't know if I can cook this again for Chubbs :(
