Recipe

One-Pot—Two Meals

Accompanying article: Stress

Here's how to enjoy food that's freshly prepared—and therefore more healthful and satisfying—every day. It's so easy—simply cook a pot of grain, for example, and use it as the base of your next two meals. The night before you'll set out your grain of choice, quinoa for example, to soak. In the morning while you're fixing a cup of tea bring the quinoa to boil, and by the time you're out of the shower and dressed breakfast is waiting for you.

For breakfast, make one serving into a hot cereal and add your favorite accompaniments such as milk and cinnamon or maple syrup and butter. For a cold-weather lunch pack the second serving of quinoa into a thermal container and bring along a hot thermos of soup. For a warm-weather lunch, make a Main Course Salad, or, if you have other plans for lunch, leave the last portion of quinoa out on the counter loosely covered with a cotton cloth or a bamboo mat. Then, when you walk into the door after work it takes but a few minutes to cook it up into a stir fry with some fresh vegetables and tofu or chicken breast. (You can also use quinoa in a casserole or incorporate it into patties and grill, fry or broil them.) There you have it—two quick and satisfying meals a day.

In addition to quinoa, try millet, rice, polenta, wild rice, buckwheat, barley or amaranth. For variations in preparation method and cooking times see my books The New Whole Foods Encyclopedia and The Splendid Grain. When you supplement your grains with a wide variety of seasonal produce and quality protein foods you'll come up with endless meal combinations.

Please don't cook a huge pot of quinoa or any other grain to last you all week. Refrigerating cooked grains imparts a waxy texture and washes out their subtle flavors. How many times have you tossed, rather than used, week-old refrigerated grains? Freshly prepared foods satiate and energize; stale and leftover foods make us feel stale and leftover.

May you be well nourished,

Rebecca Wood