Noe's First Burning Mouth

I recalled that I still have Christmas point wildrice from Elizabeth that has been sitting in our storage for more than a year. Also, Noe is now eight month old, which means he can eat cheese. So we decided to cook Spinach Wild Rice Casserole for the whole family and for Noe.

Ingredients

• One cup of wild rice
• Two cups of stock (beef, chicken, vegetable, etc)
• One onion, chopped
• Two cloves of garlic
• Smoked beef cut to cubes (I used smoked tongue)
• One bunch of spinach
• Cheese - to taste - use parmesan mozzarella mix. But since I didn't have it, I use sliced cheddar
  
• Parsley, chopped
  
• Salt, pepper, basil, rosemary - to taste
• Butter
  

Melt butter. Mix in smoked beef and brown it a bit. Mix in onion and garlic, sautee until it becomes transparent and soft. Mix in wild rice, sautee for three to five minutes. Pour in the stock and seasoning, reduce fire. Keep it over fire, stirring occasionnally until the stock is fully absorbed and the rice become soft but dry. Turn off fire, mix in most of the spinach into the rice mixture. Prepare casserole bowl. Put in the remaining spinach at the bottom. Put in a layer of cheese. Then put in some rice-spinach mixture topped with layer of cheese, do this until you finish up the rice-spinach mixture. Finish it up with a layer of cheese sprinkled wirh chopped parsley. Bake in the oven for perhaps 15 minutes (medium fire) until the cheese is nicely melted and the spinach cooked.

The taste wasn't bad at all. The hand picked wild rice really tasted exquisite. Each grain popped in your mouth and gives chewy texture to the casserole, unlike ordinary rice. We ate it with additional dash of tabasco.

When we feed Noe the spinach-cheese mixture, we accidentaly put a drop of tabasco in it. We didn't know that! Then Noe happily took a spoonfull of the spinach, chew it a couple of times, then he screamed and coughed, and his hands rubbed his face. His face became red. At that moment we all know there was a tiny drop of tabasco accidentally got into Noe's plate. But after the brief scream, he looked as if nothing happened. I guess he would be a chili lover like his mom and dad.

Summary of Noe's development over the past month:

• He crawled on two arms and two legs, at first for a short distance, and now all over the house (albeit grudgingly - HE HATES CRAWLING, HE WANTS TO WALK).
  
• He's able to take alternate steps on his feet.
  
• He would walk by creeping along furnitures. He loves this activity so much!
  
• He could stand up without holding on to anything (for 15 seconds at most). He would pull himself to standing position and then he'd let go of his hands. Look mommy, no hands!
• Seemed he started to talk too - in his own language. For example, he would consistently and specifically say "Ah-Ji-Ji!" if he wants to breastfeed. If he's upset about something else, he would not say "Ah-Ji-Ji!". When he's happy, he would say "Ah-Ah-Ah!".
  

We hope we could take videos or photos of the above pretty soon. When he did all those things we never have cameras ready in our hands.