Healing with Food Article
Quinoa
Accompanying recipe: Quinoa Breakfast Cereal
As a whole grain, it’s hard to beat quinoa (pronounced KEEN-wah). It’s quick cooking, flavorful and easy to digest. When cooked, quinoa looks something like fluffy couscous. It is meltingly soft, except for the wispy germ filaments that provide a pleasing little crunch (unless overcooked).
Once the sacred grain of the Incas, quinoa contains up to 20 percent protein. The United Nations World Health Organization observes that quinoa is closer to the ideal protein balance than any other grain, being at least equal to milk in protein quality.
In 1982, I took my first bite of quinoa and was hooked. In fact, so hooked that a few years later I traveled to Peru and Bolivia to research my book Quinoa: The Supergrain. There I fell in love with the stark and dramatic altiplano country, its people, and their foods, especially their sacred mother grain, quinoa.
Chances are the mellow taste of quinoa will also delight you. Unlike wheat, rice, corn and the other common grains, which are members of the grass family, quinoa is a member of the goosefoot family and a relative of beets. It is a non-allergenic grain.
For thousands of years, the tiny grains of quinoa were a staple throughout the Andes region from its northernmost reaches in Ecuador to the very southern tip of Chile. The Incas not only relied upon it, they revered quinoa. In a highly symbolic ritual, their ruler's chief function was to ceremoniously plant the first quinoa seed with his symbol of state, a golden spade.
The Incan civilization is usually remembered for its archaeological remains. What has remained with me is that, for them, hunger was unknown. An extensive storage and road system spread throughout the vast Incan empire. Public storehouses held quinoa, dried potatoes and chiles that were distributed to all during times of shortage.
When the Spaniards conquered the Incas in the 16th century, they virtually destroyed this well-developed civilization in just one year. Nutritionally inferior barley and wheat became upper class staples and soon flourished in former quinoa terraces.
Quinoa became associated with poverty, illiteracy and chicken feed. Today the Aymara and the Quechua peoples, the remains of the once proud Incas, depend upon costly imported, refined and nutritionally inferior noodles and rice.
At the time of my visit, the Indians believed that if they feed quinoa to their hungry children, it will make them stupid. (The astonishingly high Indian infant mortality rate in Bolivia was 30 percent!) Fortunately today, well-placed pride in their native grain is resurfacing as quinoa’s value on the world market grows.
Quinoa is a spectacular plant that I’ve grown in my backyard garden. The leafy five foot high plant looks something like sorghum when green but at harvest it is a flamboyant fuchsia. The heavily laden seed heads are a boggling color display -- orange, red, ivory, purple, yellow, green, ocher, rose, lavender and black.
The quinoa seed typically available in the United States is buff-yellow in color. As a whole grain, you may purchase it boxed or in bulk. It’s also available in flakes, pasta, milled into flour and in cold breakfast cereals.
Freely substitute quinoa for rice in pilafs, soups and stir fries. For a comforting and nutritious “rice” pudding, substitute quinoa for the rice. Serve quinoa as a grain side dish to accompany any meal.
May you be well nourished,
Rebecca Wood