Wheat Waste

So the last few days I have been making a real effort food-wise.

I have been looking and thinking about alternatives to wheat. Why do we eat soooo much wheat and not so much other stuff?

Well, wheat is cheap and plentiful and grows well in certain places, such as England. It was right there when man first domesticated cereals and it's domestication is what allowed us to build cities, along with barley.

Wheat is not the most grown cereal though, rice has that priviledge, followed by corn and then wheat. Corn or maize however is used in animals more than wheat so wheat is the second most consumed cereal by humans.

What gets me about these cereals, is the sheer inventiveness that has been turned to them. Look at wheat and all the uses we have made of it - bread, pastry, cake, biscuits, tortillas, pitta breads, pasta and muesli and I am sure there are more.....

And rice.... rice is eaten as is or ground into flour which is used in baked goods as well as to make rice milk and sake. It is also popped and well, we humans have found many ways to make it tasty.

Maize has many uses as well but is used less for baked goods as it has no gluten so does not rise as well as wheat.

But these are just three of many. When I was in the supermarket the other night I found two things, firstly potato farls and secondly bags of grains for use in salads and soups etc. The potato farl is made of mashed potato mixed with a little wheat flour. I tried them previously and was not overly impressed. This time they had better serving suggestions on the packet so I did not eat them as they came, I lightly fried them and they were soooo much nicer!

There were several different mixes of grains and I added a mixed grain to my stew yesterday and it was nice. Looks a little like frog spawn but pleasantly soaks up flavour. I like this as a way of bringing other cerals into the diet.

It doesn't matter if I have a little wheat, I just can't eat very much, so both of these are perfect for me as options. The thing is, we were not meant to eat one thing exclusively. And that is the problem for me, I need variety. I can't eat potato farls all the time or barley filled stews. I need change to be healthy. But this quest for variety is why humans have quested to find so many ways of cooking them.

But there are so many cereals and other carbohydrate based foods that are staple parts of peoples diets. There is so much inventiveness out there, so many people have experimented to find tasty ways of cooking them up. Why does it have to be wheat, wheat, wheat? Maybe with a bit of corn and rice thrown in? Supermarkets are making us unhealthy. They give us an illusion of choice but in reality they often take it away.

I looked up potato farls online and discovered they were part of a traditional Ulster breakfast. This led to the different types of cooked breakfast in the UK. And I discovered there is a lot of variety to the carbohydrate portion. Tattie scones (potato scones), oatcakes sit alongside bread. If you look further afield the variety becomes more marked, galettes, grits, home fries and all sorts of other things.

The important thing when experimenting is to make use of the existing knowledge. People already know what goes well with these things..... How to make them tasty....

But there is a whole world of foods out there..... I just need to find it..... (and the time)

Barley, sorghum, rye, quinoa, oats, millet, fonio, buckwheat, spelt, teff, amaranth, wild rice..... all of these are eaten as foods and there has to be at least one tasty way of eating each one? surely?

Other starchy foods such as sago, tapioca, potato, squash, yams and taro have potential. I have an entire cookbook on potato's, I think I need to give it another look.

I think potato and maize are things I need to look at further..... to begin with