Whole grains

oatmeal or kashi lean crunch for breakfast. whole wheat pasta, brown rice for dinner. Bulgar pilaf for a change of pace.

Or look in the Jewish or Kosher section of a supermarket for Kasha in boxes, and make that, or use rice in its various forms including wild, which is a grass and not a rice, and keep a look out for barley packages, and lentil packages.

Lentil is a pulse (grain legume) crop, so it IS a grain! Used in Indian and other cuisines regularly, and available as red and green, amongst other forms. Can be made into a soup, or eaten as a side dish both cold or warm, etc. Works well with curries too...

FWIW

RsH

---------------------------- >KT wrote:

======================================================= Copyright retained. My opinions - no one else's... If this is illegal where you are, do not read it!

I recently got converted to steel cut oats as a breakfast cereal. I boil them with cinnamon, maple syrup, dried apricots and walnuts, along with a pinch of salt. They neither look nor taste like rolled oats.

Brown rice is great as a dinner side dish plain or herbed or added to soup. A hot bowl of brown rice with milk, sugar, and butter makes a tastier breakfast than oatmeal. Barley is a good side dish and very good in soup. Some stores offer quick brown rice and barley which aren't quite as tasty but trim cooking time from 45 minutes to 10. Wheat pilaf (ala), quinoa, wild rice, and millet make nice dinner sides. Buckwheat groats (kasha) are nice for dinner or breakfast and cook very quickly. Any rolled grain - wheat, rye, oats, triticale, etc. - is good for breakfast porridge or can be cooked into mush and added to bread (just use any oatmeal bread recipe). Cornmeal is great for polenta, scrapple, and fried mush (yum! fried mush and maple syrup!) but you have to search to find whole-grain cornmeal; it's often degerminated to keep it from spoiling quickly.

You might like to go shopping at a natural foods co-op where there's often a wide selection of grains both common and unusual, buy a scoopful of whatever looks interesting, and google for recipes when you get home. Check out the whole grain pastas too, while you're there.

If you get your whole grains from bread, be sure to read the labels carefully. A lot of "whole wheat" breads are white bread colored brown, with a sprinkle of whole grain added to justify "whole wheat bread" on the label. As wholesome as "seven grain bread" sounds, it can still be dyed Wonderbread with just a dusting of half a dozen other grains. If "wheat flour" or "enriched wheat flour" is the first ingredient on the label (rather than specifically WHOLE wheat flour), it's probably plain white bread masquerading as whole grain.

Kathy

Why not make the basic grains part of the main course, or indeed the central item, for lunch and/or dinner? Barley, wheat, rye, oats, buckwheat, and quinoa grains as well as the standard rice and corn make all sorts of great dishes. You can do variants on the pilaf theme with barley, wheat, quinoa, and buckwheat. Meanwhile, you can make various risotto-like dishes with barley, rye, and oats. The basic idea is simply to simmer the grains in an appropriate amount of water and/or stock. Then you add to them whatever you feel like adding - vegetables, beans, meats, you name it. Some basic grains can form the bulk component of a stew and make good additions to soups as well. (barley, wheat, and rye are generally the best choices here). How they turn out is largely a matter of water ratios, cooking temperatures, and whether you add the grain to the liquid when it's cold or hot. Generally:

More water makes for a creamier consistency. The true grains - wheat, barley, rye, and oats, work better with this method than other grains which tend to turn into a lumpy, gummy mass. "More" is in the range of 3-4 cups water per cup of grain. Barley takes the most (4) and wheat probably works best with the least (3).

Less water makes a dry, somewhat fluffy consistency. Here, it's the grains like quinoa and buckwheat which tend to turn out best. Quinoa you can substitute almost straight across for long-grain rice. Buckwheat has its own uses - especially in Eastern European recipes. Oats don't work well with this technique and will become *very* solid and chewy. "Less" is in the range of 1 1/2-2 cups of water per cup of grain. Buckwheat you really need to use the lower range or else it sort of dissolves. Quinoa will take more, but overdoing it (going to, say, 3 cups) turns it into a leaden lump.

Cooking at low heat, especially if the grain is added when the water is cold, makes for creamier results and a softer grain. Oats and barley are particularly successful cooked in this way. It's convenient to use a crock- pot to do grains like this and makes for hearty, low-effort winter meals.

Meanwhile, cooking at high heat, like one does for rice where the water is rapidly brought to a boil, makes for a fluffier texture, mandatory for quinoa and buckwheat, also successful with wheat (which can be done either creamy or fluffy) If you bring the water to a boil first, then add the grain, you get the ultimate, fluffiest results. That's especially important with long-grain rice and it also yields the very best texture for quinoa.

After that it's a matter of experimentation to find out which grains you like and what cooking tactics produce the results you prefer.