Health Nut

I recently came across a recipe in Ina's Barefoot Contessa Family Style cookbook that intrigued me because it called for a grain I'd never heard of before - wheatberry.  A little research made it obvious - in a way it probably should have been by the name alone.  I mean, c'mon - I know what wheat is, I know about cracked wheat, and bulgur, and I know we make flour out of wheat grain.  But a wheatberry?  Who cooks with that?!  Oh.  Turns out this berry makes a couple of salads worth a try.

The other ingredients for this first salad were basics - red onion, scallion, bell pepper, carrot, good olive oil (which Natalie and I read as: "not the cheap bulk crap you can buy by the gallon at Costco", but who knows?), and balsamic vinegar (undefined).  The picture looked downright healthy. In light of the week's menu and its, shall we say, not-so-heart-healthy focus, I thought it a good idea to throw in a couple salads that might help combat complete artery blockage.

So on Saturday I set to work boiling the wheatberries I'd found at, where else, Berkeley Bowl.    The recipe said "45 minutes or until they are soft".  Well, they definitely got softer after 45 minutes - and by comparison to their uncooked rice-like firmness, I judged them officially soft.  Having never eaten these before, I have no clue if they would have become softer still with more time. As it turned out, this salad was a bit of a workout to chew, what with the chewy wheatberries, the raw carrot and the raw bell pepper.  Surprisingly, Jack was not a fan (that boy's starting to get on my nerves) but Natalie was!  I think I'm a fan.  I'll try it again, and maybe boil the berries a little longer to see what happens.  Then again, maybe all that chewing is part of the "healthy" in this dish - a little workout with your meal.

Sunday I turned to another recipe from the same book - Chicken with Tabbouleh.  Looking toward the week ahead, and knowing roasted chicken was going to be on the menu for Sunday dinner, I thought this would make for a healthy lunch alternative to my recent salami sandwiches, and fried spring rolls from Sunflower which I might eat every day if I could justify it.  This is another straightforward recipe from Ina - an Americanized version of tabbouleh, which is supposed to be primarily parsley and mint, but which we tend to make with more bulgur or cracked wheat (which are not the same thing but are both derived from the wily wheatberry) than traditional recipes call for.  And I liked the addition of protein to round out the dish as a more complete meal.  I didn't have the tomatoes called for but had some bell pepper left over from the other salad so I used that.  I also increased the quantities of parsley and mint because a) I love both of them and 2) I didn't see the point of leaving partial bunches of either in the fridge for some future dish when I knew they would only make this one better.

That's the salad before the addition of chicken and it was great just like that - again, Natalie loved it!  And I mean loved it - she came back to my house from school, on a week she was staying at her Dad's house, to get a tupperware full so she could have it for lunch later in the week.  I have no doubt that she ate her away around the abhorrent bell peppers that are such an affront to her taste buds, but I still call that a success!  She would have eaten around the tomatoes too.

I had it for lunch, with the chicken, a couple of different times last week and it was really perfect - filling but with a bright, fresh, and nutty taste that was just perfect at lunch.  In fact, I felt so dang healthy at lunch this week that I didn't care when I served up more meatballs and pasta for dinner.