Skip to main content

Whole grain

Whole grain foods are heart healthy. They are high-fiber, high-protein foods. It's obvious we should include more in our daily diet. Making the switch should be easy enough, souldn`t it? Choosing that grainy food at the grocery store relies simply on discipline so I guess it's not too difficult to toss the whole grain dry pasta into the shopping cart... but how does it taste?

A little while back I had bought "Catelli Healthy Harvest Flax Omega-3 Spaghetti" and it sat in our pantry for weeks. This past Sunday I decided to give it a go. I used Ragu sauce and doctored it up with canned tomatoes, italiano seasoning and frozen veggies (carrots, celery, onion, peppers). The pasta took much longer to cook than the regular stuff, but there was no hurry to eat. My first piping hot bite tasted fine, but as it cooled down to a reasonable eating temperature I didn't like the taste. Christian however loved it! He mopped it up and darn well near licked the plate clean. Impressive! Maybe it will just be an acquired taste for me... maybe.

I`ve found it relatively easy to choose to buy whole grain breads, pitas, tortillas & most recently english muffins. We all like it. Well, Christian is fine with everything except for those that noticeably have seeds in them. He refuses to eat the seeds in bread yet he loves sunflower seeds on their own. Hmm. I have found though that the pitas & tortillas are very thin. The pitas were really hard to open the pockets without tearing them apart and most of the tortillas cracked as I was rolling them for chicken wraps. I did discover this morning that if I fold the tortillas over, like a burrito, they hold together better. Problem solved!

In an attempt to learn what other whole grain foods we should be eating I googled a food list and among some of the common suggestions are bulger, buckwheat, millet, & quinoa. I have no idea what or how to use these! Maybe I should just stick to what I do know and take it slow. Maybe I will find a new recipe including one of these products and plan to make it with Christian. I`m sure he will like that.

As you can probably tell I am really interested in molding ourselves to incorporate more whole grain foods into our diet. Both of Christian`s Grandfathers had heart attacks. It sure is a big reason to eat heart healthy. As parents we always want to protect our family and that`s just what I am trying to do by encouraging healthy eating habits. I am working on adjusting my grocery buying... we have almost used up all of our white rice so our next rice purchase will be brown rice or wild rice.
We have a big container of oatmeal that I plan to start using in baking projects with Christian and the cereals currently in our pantry are whole grain. We are on track, but the goal is to stay on it.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Mango-Avocado Salsa with BBQ Chicken

One of my favorite foods in the whole wide world is avocado. It's a great thing to love because they have nearly 20 essential nutrients, including fiber, potassium, Vitamin E, B-vitamins, and folic acid. The only thing that I need to be careful with is that they are loaded with calories as well. One whole medium sized avocado is a whooping 250 calories! I was recipe searching back in April and came upon a mango-avocado salsa that I just had to try. We've had mango salsa many times before, but adding avocado was a whole new ball game. It was quite simple... cubed avocado, mango (I used frozen), and tomato, plus some diced red onion. Mix it all up and there you go. I served it over BBQ grilled chicken. Usually we have our chicken smothered with BBQ sauce, but this time I only marinaded it in some Budwiser brand BBQ sauce. Millard put it on the grill and held off on the extra sauce. It was a good choice. Our sides were sauteed a mix of fresh and frozen peas and asparagus.

BBQ Chicken Rub

Yup, chicken again! Don't be surprised if we start clucking soon. We do tend to eat quite a lot of chicken anyway, but we recently hit a good sale on whole chicken legs so we took full advantage of it. What's bbq chicken without seasoning? Only thing is we are cutting our sodium intake these days. Most bought mixes are absolutely full of sodium... not heart healthy! So... I searched online and found a low sodium rub at www.LowSodiumCooking.com : Rub #2 - The Mild One A sweeter, less spicy rub for grilling and smoking. 1/2 c Paprika 2 T Black Pepper,Freshly Ground 1/3 c Brown Sugar 2 T Chili Powder 2 T Onion Powder 2 T Garlic Powder Mix well, store in a cool dark place. Yield: 22 Servings 'The Mild One' was rubbed on the chicken and grilled to perfection. Of course I took the fat off first! It was very tasty and crusted nicely on the outside, but was moist and tender on the inside. I served it with Corn on the Cob with just a little chili seasoning sprink...

Jerk Shrimp Taco with Pina Colada Crema

Tacos are such an easy meal and even though we like the typical ground beef taco we are always up for a new twist.  I found this idea on pinterest and changed it up to fit what we had on hand.    The original recipe said to 'drizzle' the crema, but mine was too thick to drizzle so I piped it on.   Also, I subbed canned pineapple instead of fresh pineapple.  The taste was still delicious though. The original recipe called for a homemade jerk marinade.  We could've done it, but I already had dry jerk seasoning in the pantry so hubby combined it with some OJ and soy sauce to make a marinade.  It worked out very well.  We subbed green cabbage instead of red and used a Pineapple Habanero Sauce that we had in the fridge instead of a homemade pineapple salsa.  And even though I know that the fresh grilled pineapple salsa would've been absolutely delicious, the sauce sub was also very, extremely tasty.   And ...