The Millet Militia.

Okay, confession:

I love food.

Weird? I know. Who loves food? I mean, really.

What I love most about food, though, is when it's real. And clean. And nutritious. AND, most importantly, tastes good. I love tasty, real food. I actually get really excited about it. And spend inordinate amounts of time learning about my food: where it comes from, how to grow it (for when my dreams of a garden become concrete. Boo to renting on that count for now), what makes it nutritious, what it can do for the health of my body, AND...most importantly....how to make it, and make it delicious...and keep it nutritious.
Oh, baby, I love my food.

My hubby loves food, too, but it's a different kind. It's the pretend kind. The kind that fizzes. And coats your tongue with sugar. And tastes good. But that's okay, because I like it sometimes, too. More than sometimes, even. And it keeps my feet on the ground when I start floating away into my spaghetti-squash dreams. And although it really is important to me to enjoy the taste of my food, sometimes his definition and my definition of "tastes good" differs. SOooo it also challenges me to find ways to prepare my favorite, deliciously real foods in ways that are yummy to me, but also appealing to him. And when I say challenge...I mean it. I'll get something to a point where I can't-get-enough-of-it-it's-so-scrumptious and hand it to him with high hopes....and get a wrinkled nose with "well...it's okaaay but..." And I'll make a mental note to try something different with it next time....while gladly keeping this round aaaallll to myself. Yumyumyum. Oh, and Baby-Rae. She's usually a good sport when it comes to food.

Anyways.

I've been really curious about different grains lately. Curious enough to buy some to experiment with.

Like millet, for example.

Photo Credit

Last night, I cooked up a tidy little amount in my rice cooker (with the same water to grain ratio I would use if making rice) and hopped on the Millet Train with both feet. Here goes nothing, thought I.

This morning, I had it for brekky. I just warmed it up and prepared it like I would a bowl of oatmeal for myself: some maple syrup, milk, and a spoonful of peanut butter on the side. It worked! The texture is grainier than oatmeal, but I liked the change. Star for millet as breakfast.

For dinner this evening, I was inspired by this recipe. But the head of cauliflower I had on hand got burnt to shame in the oven a few nights earlier, thanks to my psycho appliance (No, really, it was totally my oven. Not me even a little bit. At all.). That is a different story altogether. So I was cauliflower-less. Therefore: I improvised. And soon a bunch of millet, a can of lima (butter) beans, some chicken broth, a few cloves of garlic and an onion (both sauteed) all got blended together into a mashy pile of mashed-potato-looking stuff. And it was goooood: Mild enough to cheer on my gravy, and nutritious enough to do my body good, but tasty enough on its own to repeat again. And again. You'd really have to blend it like crazy in order for it to have the same consistency as potatoes, but if you just expect it to be--again--a little grainier, than you're set. Checkmark for millet as dinner.

Go, millet!
I'm still curious as to how else I can use the stuff, but for now, I think I'll just eat the rest for breakfast tomorrow. My next curiosity to satisfy is what-the-heck spelt berries taste like all cooked up. And I'll spend too long when I should be going to bed looking for recipes to try out with them. (Sigh!)

Oh, the burdens of a food addict.