WHOLE GRAIN GOODNESS EXPERIMENT TWO

WHOLE GRAIN GOODNESS EXPERIMENT TWO

The next whole grain quest for nutritional goodness. I should confess that when I started this experiment, I just wanted some barley but couldn’t find it. So here I am trying all of the more exotic selections of grains. Millet, The Traditional Grain of Asia, was called off the bench to go in for barley.

Millet looks like seeds but is bigger than the Amaranth so someone has defined it as a grain. Okay. It even puffs up and becomes bigger when cooked just like rice. Like rice it takes the flavor of the seasonings you put with it. I would say it has a very bland taste instead of a stronger taste you have to disguise. I am happy to say I didn’t overcook it. Its little standing up grains are a soft yellow color and they looked lovely in the peppers I stuffed with them.

So I took the lovely yellow grains, mixed them with a little bit of sweet sausage, some onion and mild pepper, and Italian seasoning and stuffed them into peppers. Italian seasoning is my second string seasoning when I don’t have strong feelings about what I should use. I have a system that prescribes thyme, basil, rosemary, and oregano for some of my cooking efforts, but when I have doubts I use the Italian seasoning which is a combination of all of them until some sort of flavoring system reveals itself. It is an intuitive, crystal ball kind of process that eventually becomes clear to me.

I fed these lovely color coordinated stuffed peppers to my husband, the gourmand, who thinks fish sticks are a fine food. He was very receptive to this attempt at whole grain goodness. I never argue with success, but bear in mind, if I am not in my kitchen, this man goes steady with Marie Callender. When I text him I am coming home, send that woman out the back door, he is always glad to see me and eat my experiments.