Making the Switch to Whole Wheat Anything

In my ongoing efforts to eat healthier, my husband and I decided to start adding more whole grain items into our cart. This wasn't a very hard decision, especially with all of the evidence that is out there about the benefits of whole grains. The only problem was getting used to the taste and texture of whole grain pastas and cereals.

Our first attempts at cooking with whole grains were kind of a bummer. For instance, if you don't use enough water when cooking brown rice, it can come out kind of chewy, and chewy rice was not what we were looking for. When we made spaghetti with whole grain pasta, we didn't cook it long enough, and the noodles also came out chewy, and it put me off of using whole grain pasta for awhile.

Now that we've learned how to cook these grains the correct way and have them taste like the pasta and rice we grew up with, whole grains are a staple in our diets. Here are a couple tips for cooking with whole grain pasta and rice:

-Cook the pasta five minutes longer than it says on the box, and taste a noodle every couple of minutes until the pasta is as soft as you like it.

-For whole grain rice (like brown rice or wild rice) use a little bit more water than you usually would. If the recipe calls for one cup of rice to one and a half cup of water, use two cups of water instead.

Some other ways to sneak whole grains into your diet in relatively painless ways are to switch to whole grain bread, whole grain tortillas and also whole grain cereals. Its a pretty easy way to improve your diet in a small way. According to mypyramid.gov, whole grains provide B vitamins, iron, folate, and may help with weight management. They can also help lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease, something which may be far from our minds at this stage in life, but it doesn't hurt to be aware of preventing these problems when we're young.