Wheatberries for Breakfast!

I don't post a lot of breakfasts on here. A long time ago, I posted a recipe for banana pancakes that I just titled "Breakfast." This isn't because I was too lame to come up with a good title, honestly (not that I really put much thought into them in the first place)--it's because I never really expected to have another breakfast to post. I don't really eat breakfast; I like to sleep late and I'm not usually hungry when I wake up, so I don't usually feel like getting up and cooking up a storm. It does happen, but rarely. Add to this that I'm not a huge fan of most quick breakfast foods--I hate cereal, toast is boring, I don't drink coffee, I dislike the texture of oatmeal and its relatives. (Cereal's the worst--for some reason, if I'm not hungry or only a little hungry and I eat a bowl of cereal, I end up feeling much more hungry afterward, as if it just reminded me that there's space in my stomach for food.)

However. I have recently discovered a breakfast that is delicious, filling, healthy, and really really easy to throw together if you plan ahead. As you may have guessed from the title, it involves wheatberries. As I said in my previous post, wheatberries, once cooked, last about a week when refrigerated--this means that all the planning ahead that is required is to boil up a bunch of wheatberries over the weekend and you've got breakfast all week! So, here you go, and it really could not be any easier:

RECIPE: Wheatberry Breakfast

Ingredients:

-about 1/2 to 3/4 cups cooked wheatberries

-2 or 3 scoops of all-natural chunky peanut butter (I use Teddy brand and love it. As for the chunky, I hate chunky peanut butter in any other form, but the crunch is great in this.)

-honey, probably about a tablespoon

Instructions:

1. Get out a cereal bowl. Pour the wheatberries into it. Add the peanut butter and drizzle the honey on top. Mix.

I'd just opened this jar of peanut butter--it's way easier to mix when it hasn't been refrigerated yet, but I must say I prefer cold peanut butter.

Mixed!

Okay, how easy is this? You get protein from the peanut butter, fiber from the wheatberries. The honey keeps the peanut butter from being too sticky and is super tasty. The chunks in the peanut butter are excellent with the texture of the wheatberries. And I bet you could throw some fruit in there if you wanted, too! Apples or bananas would probably be delicious.

What do you guys eat for breakfast? Do you throw something together quickly or cook an actual meal in the morning? Or do you rush out the door and stop for coffee and a breakfast sandwich on your way to work? (I must admit, that's how I usually get by when I have to be somewhere in the morning.)

Have a great weekend, everyone! I'll be back with another update early next week :)

wheatberry salad

I've been terrible about blogging this week. Every day I think, at some point, "Oh, I'll write a blog post today!" and it hasn't happened yet. This may be because Mike brought his Wii over to my house and I've been playing Zelda, or possibly because it's been so hot that I didn't want to do anything but complain about how hot it is. It's been pushing 90 all week, even in the middle of the night, and I don't enjoy this kind of weather. (I also hate cold weather. Hooray.)

I was going to write a bit about what wheatberries are, but when I went to Foodista to find a widget to put on the bottom of this post, I found that they didn't have a page about wheatberries (and therefore no widget) and I had to write one myself. So, if you're curious, click on the foodista widget at the bottom of this page to see what I wrote up over there. The cool thing is that if I'm wrong about something, or know something you don't, you can edit it! It's kind of like a wikipedia for foodies, which is awesome, except people can freely edit recipes other people post and I'm not sure how I'd feel about that.

Anyway, wheatberries make awesome salads. I first discovered them when a little bakery/cafe down the street from my house (literally a 5 minute walk) carried a wheatberry salad. Mike and I used to buy it whenever we were there as a side for whatever else we ate. Unfortunately, this little shop closed down and I can no longer buy wheatberry salad there--so I learned to make it! The last day I went there, I asked the guy who worked there what goes into the salad, and he listed a whole bunch of things, and I tried to commit them to memory so I could replicate it at home. This is what I ended up with. I'm not including amounts, because you might say "I don't really like a lot of uncooked red onion" or "hmm I want a LOT of carrots!" and also because I didn't measure amounts. I feel that, ideally, you want to end up with about the same volume of vegetables as you have of wheatberries.

Oh, the important things about wheatberries: the hardest part is finding them, but if you're fortunate enough to have a Whole Foods nearby they sell them in bulk for under two dollars per pound. They triple in volume after they're cooked, so don't cook too many at once unless you want a ton of extra wheatberries (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as you'll see next time I post which will hopefully be soon). Lastly, you have to soak them overnight before cooking them, so if you want to make this, plan ahead!

RECIPE: Wheatberry Salad

-Wheatberries

-Carrots

-Celery

-Red onion

-Green onion

-Green pepper

-Fresh parsley

-Craisins

-Balsamic vinegar

-Extra virgin olive oil

**NOTE: Everything (except the wheatberries and dressing) is optional!**

To cook the wheatberries:

Soak the wheatberries overnight in a lot of water. Drain and rinse them. You'll need a fine mesh colander for this--if it's got bigger holes, you'll lose some, or they'll plug the holes and you'll never get the water out. The next day, as early as possible, boil them. You'll need a very large pot to do this--everything I could find said to cook them in a 4 cups water to 1 cup wheatberries ratio. (I'm not sure how important that is, since they didn't absorb nearly that much water, but when I'm given a specific ratio I stick to it.) Boil them for about an hour, until you can eat one and it has a fresh pop on the outside and a soft creamy rice-like texture inside. Let them cool and refrigerate them. If you didn't give yourself a lot of time, you can chill them quickly by running cool water over them. I strained the wheatberries out of the pot, put them back in the pot, filled with cold water, strained again, etc, for about four changes of water before they were cool enough to stick in the fridge for a while.

To make the salad:

Chop all the vegetables into really small pieces--no bigger than your pinkie nail. Add them, and the craisins, to the wheatberries. Mix until thoroughly combined. Drizzle some balsamic vinegar and olive oil over the salad and mix again. Serve immediately, or chill. The salad can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to a week. And it's delicious.

Wheatberries. Don't they kinda look like popcorn kernels? I highly recommend that, before making the salad, you eat a small handful on their own--they have some excellent flavor by themselves.

Salad! Serve it with some grilled meat, or bring it to a party, or just eat it on its own. You may notice a lack of craisins in here--I completely forgot them, and I wish I hadn't, but Mike doesn't like them all that much and was thrilled. See? Everything is optional.

There are a lot of ways to make wheatberry salad, and you could probably add pretty much whatever you want and it would taste good. But this is really excellent and I urge you to try it out if you can find wheatberries anywhere--it's really simple, super cheap, and you can make a big batch and have lunch for a week!

I seem to be developing an affinity for summer salads. Though most of them are good any time of year, the vegetables are usually fresher around now, and I love having a cold meal that's filling and nutritious, especially when you don't have to cook anything (which this can be, if you keep cooked wheatberries around. I'm tempted to.) Do you have a favorite summer salad? I'd love to hear about it!