The Splendid Grain - Excerpts

I've always loved grains. As a child I spent hours lolling in meadows and on lawns, plucking blades of grass and nibbling on their tender stems -- a simple beginning to what has become a lifelong passion. I was raised in Ogden, Utah, but my heart and joy was with my grandparents in Tremonton, a small farming community in northern Utah. Weekends, school holidays, and summer found me in the warm and welcoming embrace of these loving people. Grandpa had long since turned his farm over to his son, but would, each day, drive out to see how the crops were faring. How I loved those rides in his big, green Buick through section after section of neighboring farmland out to our farm. "Now, look-a-here at the Hanson's barley. Look close and you'll see, compared to ours, theirs isn't up as well. We got ours in before them heavy spring rains." He'd tell me what each crop needed, how to know when to sow and when to reap. He instilled in me a love of the earth and its bounty that still propels me. When the corn was ripe, Grandpa would drive us out to those fields that had sweet corn planted along the border of the field (livestock) corn. His rheumatism kept him in the car but he'd send me out carrying a gunny sack with instructions to fill it as best I could. Being alone in a corn field is a truly awesome experience. It really does get as high as an elephant's eye and is almost as overpowering. Once, when I was six or seven, I got lost in the maze of a towering forest of corn stalks. Only the sound of Grandpa's forceful honking led me in the direction of the car. The memory still evokes no only a sense of awe but a sense of the vital energy of the earth.

Along with the bounty of the farm, our table was laden with the fruits of foraging and hunting. Mushrooms from the meadows, asparagus from the roadside, wild game, birds and brook trout and, always, my mother's fresh baked breads and desserts. Our cellar was filled in row upon row of preserves, home-canned fruit, grape juice and apricot nectar. My parents and grandparents had great respect for our food. It was to be enjoyed and celebrated, abundantly shared but never, ever to be wasted.

My introduction to grains other than those grown in my Utah surroundings came when, in the mid sixties, as a fresh-faced college graduate, I headed farther west. I found myself, unknowingly, right in the midst of a cultural revolution. I had a job at the University of California Medical Center and my first apartment on Haight Street. Quite unsure of myself and almost overwhelmingly petrified, I wandered through the streets of flower children dressed in my very uptight and homemade business suit. My fear began to dissipate when I realized that all those young hippies seemed to be having more fun than I. Determined to find out why, I mustered up my courage to ask. A lanky hippie call Howdy, as in "Howdy, my name's Howdy," told me the trick was to get high and stay high. Innocently I inquired "How?" The answer came, laconically, "Eat brown rice."

I'd never heard of brown rice but Howdy directed me to the local source. I sped off to this hole-in-the-wall "natural" food store and bought a pound of brown rice. I immediately went home and proceeded to burn my first pot.

Soon hooked on brown rice despite that initiating, I moved to Boston, Massachusetts, to study Zen macrobiotic cookery with Michio and Aveline Kushi. Far more important than a knowledge of whole grains and how to cook them was the respoect of the whole cooking process and of life itself that I acquired. As Aveline used to say, "A careful cook doesn't spill a single drop of water on the floor."

Over the thirty years since then, I've fed myself and my chosen family of friends and then my own loving family with whole grains. I've made bread once a week, enjoying forming and shaping the loaf, smelling the baking aromas and, most of all, sharing the loaf. Grains, more than any other food, invite this molding of a meal through your own energy and intent with the gift of sharing with others.

Why do I specify whole grains and whole grain products rather than refined grains? The answer is simple. A grain is more delicious when intact, rather than when polished, pearled, degermed, or refined. I subscribe to food pundit M.F.K. Fisher's observation in her classic, The Art of Eating, "All of them, whether tender or hard, thick skinned or thin, die when they are peeled. . . even as you or I." However, there are times when whole grains will take a back seat to those that have been processed. In the intense heat of the Albuquerque summer, brown rice is just too warming and heavy for me so I cook with the lighter and blander white rice. I will also frequently combine white flour, for it's lightness, with whole grain flour for its flavor, when baking cakes or other airy pastries. When your diet is well balanced and includes plenty of whole grains and fresh vegetables and fruits, you can certainly use processed grains to add variety to your menu.

Imagine planting some white rice and some brown rice. The grains with their germ and bran removed will rot. The intact grains will flourish. The germ contains the spark of life and the bran gives shape, form and order to the kernel. Both germ and bran are concentrated sources of nutrients. When we consume any food, that food becomes us and we become imbued with its energetic properties. That's exactly why whole grains make us feel good and provide us with boundless energy...