The beans should be handled naturally and should not be handled as much as in processes such as grinding, par-boiling, drying, and re-parboiling to shorten cooking time. As it is, over-refining grains causes them to lose much of their nutritional value.

whole grain rice

You may be wondering why most Asians never tire of eating the daily staple of rice. This is because the small grains can easily pick up and offset the flavors of vegetable garnishes, having little or a neutral flavor of their own. Although they are very small, they add immensely to your satisfaction of what really makes a balanced meal. In other words, the tiny little grains will go great with whatever accompanying food you choose to eat. Somehow, rice promotes healthy eating in harmony with all kinds of whole foods.

So it’s ideal to have the more common grains, which are acidic foods, combined with alkalizing foods like cruciferous vegetables or leafy greens, for a good rush of those hardworking protein molecules in your body. This combination helps your digestion so you get the nutrients you need for energy.

bamboo rice

Once every four years, the mass flowering of bamboo produces dangling clusters of seeds at the tips of the branches. These bamboo seeds or rice is what everyone is waiting for. The thing is that bamboo rice tastes like wheat and is more nutritious than rice with its higher content of protein, calcium and iron. However, a bamboo rice forest harvest is not a common event; and most of the time, the elephants will arrive before the humans.

foxtail millet

In truth, the green foxtail grass with spiky, brush-shaped flowers on its head is actually the wild ancestor of foxtail millet, the second most widely planted species of millet. I couldn’t help but laugh at the incongruity; so plants defy Mendel’s laws of inheritance after all!

And in case you have been distracted by its wild origin, it will do its best to satisfy all your culinary needs; vegetable salads and soups welcome its inclusion, as do patties along with basil, onion and garlic, while multi-seed bread and noodles are listless without this millet flour.

This sounds like a grain for all seasons; in fact, it is proving increasingly versatile for cooking thanks to an avalanche of easy homemade recipes. Not surprisingly, foxtail millet has achieved staple status in India and northern China, where fermentation of the grains produces vinegar and wine and sprouting grains produce vegetables. However, your thyroid may not agree at times of excess intake.

When young, the nutritious milky grains are edible raw; when they are older, the grains are boiled. Gluten-free sorghum pairing with corn, mushrooms and oranges will give you a complete source of protein. This is because the only essential amino acid in lysine, that is missing in sorghum, is found in the other 3 foods.

It is simply unthinkable to go against the natural current!