I want to introduce you to one of my new favorite books: Whole Grains Every Day Every Way by Lorna Sass. I found her cookbook online last month while hunting for ways to cook ‘whole grains’. As a foodie, I love to cook with a wide variety of ingredients and have always loved my trips to ethic grocery stores, health food stores, gourmet cooking shops and of course, visiting food stores and markets on my own travels around the world. I am always eager to learn more… and taste more, and I always come home with a new idea or ingredient to try.

I love Lorna’s cookbook as she begins with a “Whole Grains 101” chapter, taking you through each grain (alphabetically), describing the various forms the grain comes in, its nutritional properties, and the various ways to cook and incorporate the grain into your meals; for example, cooked in water and added to soups and salads, or milled into flour for baking, or enjoyed on its own as a breakfast cereal. The rest of the book is a compilation of delicious recipes that incorporate the grains into your daily meals.

So far I have tried Savory Barley Muffins with Thyme and Romano (note: I adapted this one), and her Chocolate Chip-Hazelnut Cookies (which I have been eating all week, yum). This weekend I plan on making her Fruit-and-Nut Oatmeal Bars, Blue Cornmeal Muffins with Chili and I’d like to cook up some of the amaranth that I bought last week and try adding it to a salad.

Lorna’s cookbook contains over 150 recipes and is full of excellent ideas for those under-appreciated whole grains that we always want to buy but never know what to do with. The whole grains include: amaranth, barley, buckwheat, corn, job’s tears, millet, oats, quinoa, rice, rye and tritcale, sorghum, teff, wheat, and wild rice. Categories include: stand-alone soups and salads, risottos, pilaf and polentas, stir fries and skillet dishes, braises, stews, casseroles and savory pies, breakfast and brunch recipes, and desserts and baked goods.

Lorna Sass has a doctorate in medieval literature and has her own blog focused on Nourishing Body and Spirit where she offers her skills as a Transformational Life Coach and promotes her cookbooks. Along with “Whole Grains”, she has written cookbooks on pressure cooking, vegetarian dishes, and a whole cookbook dedicated to cooking with soy. You can find her cookbooks online, in stores, or click here to order directly from her and she will personally autograph it for you.

I am happy to have discovered Lorna and am particularly looking forward to working my way through her book ‘Whole Grains” and learning to work with these tasty grains under her expertise.

Resource:

Sass, (L). (2006). Whole Grains Every Day Every Way. New York: Clarkson Potter/Publishers.