Barley, like most food, tastes good with salt. Parsley, olive oil, lemon juice, some pepper and a little bit of onion make it even better. Grain based dishes like this are generally considered salads, but I like to think of them more as healthy starch options when composing meals.
I've been feeding my kids Chicken Rice Soup for as long as they've been eating food. It is an easy double win for me: quick to make out of leftovers and they will always have a bowl. But this time I changed it up and used farro instead of rice.
This is a recipe I've been trying to make for a while, but it is just more effort than I usually put in. Last night I swore at the cookbook and threw it on the floor after realizing too late that the quinoa had to be cooked in advance. But now that I've made it, I have to say: this stuff is crazy delicious and worth all the work.
On leap of faith I brought this to a potluck for my friend Britt's birthday, without previously testing the recipe. It was a big hit! Lentils, quinoa, cracked wheat, greens and a good salty spice blend make this dish a sure thing. So much so that the party host asked to keep leftovers for herself. What could be better than that?
The photos are beautiful and the concept is great, but so far I'm striking out with this cookbook. First the cruncny farro, now a dinner that elicits "Ew! Crusty? Brown? I won't eat it!" To top it all off, I singed the crust.
The recipe says to use cauliflower and broccoli, but I only had romanesco, which is a little bit of both. A chartreuse space-alien looking sort of brassica, it suits this dish just fine.
This is a delicious and easy way to incorporate healthy whole grains into dinner. Millet is a good source of iron, B vitamins and calcium. It is gluten free, as is corn, the grain of true polenta. All it takes is water, a little butter, salt, parmesan cheese and heat to transform "birdseed" (what my kids call it) into a perfectly reasonable companion for roast chicken and just about any sort of salad.
This year's first bag of snap peas arrived from our CSA, Eatwell Farm, last Thursday. I've been harvesting them in small quantity out of my garden for weeks, but those have finally run their course. A new supplier is just the thing!
My sister, who has for years been living off things like Doritos and Frito-Lay Bean Dip, recently joined a CSA in her town of Tucson, Arizona. She and my Mother share the subscription, and so far have been happily consuming most everything that comes their way, or so they tell me. Until my sister phoned one morning last week, not sure what to do with the bag of wheat berries she'd ended up with.