Amaranth

I'm not a vegetarian, and I'm miles away from being vegan, but sometimes I find something to try that I'm fairly certain only the rawest of raw food vegans have ever eaten. 

OK, well, maybe I'm generalizing. To be fair, though, I'd never heard of Amaranth before except in some of the raw food, vegan blogs I've come across.  For all I know, everyone has a big container of it next to their Triscuits and I'm the last person on earth to find out about it.   DON'T JUDGE ME!

At any rate, during the afore mentioned trip to Earth Fare, I saw that the bulk containers had just been filled, and I saw the Amaranth and decided to try it!  I was a little scared, because trying stuff from the bulk bins that you've never had before is hit or miss at best.  It's the worst when you get a bag of some unidentifiable grain or beans or whatever and find out you hate it.  Then you have to fight the guilt of throwing away perfectly good food.   I got a very small scoop of the stuff, just in case it was disgusting, and brought it home.

 Raw Amaranth Seeds

Amaranth is tiny.  It's a seed rather than a grain, and if the websites I read about it are correct it's super nutritious, full of protein, and used to be part of an ancient Aztec harvest celebration where there were games, music and human sacrifice!  Who wouldn't love to try a grain that led people to ripping out hearts?!!

I had to look up how to cook with the stuff, because you don't tend to just come across Amaranth as an ingredient in your more mainstream cook books!  You can use it in all kinds of ways.  The most common way I found was making it like some kind of porridge, but I'll be honest, I was too scared to try it that way first.  It looks like cream of wheat or grits, and I just couldn't face the slimy looking texture.  Plus...it takes a long time to cook like that, and I was too hungry to wait!  The most interesting way I found to use it is to pop it like popcorn!

It's the tiniest, cutest popcorn ever!

I never knew anything else popped like popcorn, and this sounded too fun not to try.  Another great thing is that you only need a little bit to make a lot of the popped stuff, so I took about half of what I had and got to popping!

It literally only takes a few seconds to pop this stuff, and you have to have a super hot pan with a cover, preferably a glass cover so you can keep watch.   I learned the thing about the cover the hard way, because the one time I opened the top before the seeds had stopped popping, they went everywhere.  You put a few tablespoons in the pan at a time, and shake the pan while they pop.  It's like the old-school popcorn method, I guess.   You have to be very careful not to burn it.  Once it stops popping, you have to pour it into another container, or the heat from the pot will burn it.  It took less than 5 minutes to pop all of the seeds I'd set aside, and I soon had about 2/3 cup of the popped Amaranth.  

It didn't smell...good.  I mean, it wasn't a bad, gagging smell or anything, but it was a little like burnt grass.  I was afraid I'd actually burnt the seeds, but when I tasted them, I was pleasantly surprised!  It had an awesome texture and tasted really good!  I think my brain wanted it to taste more like actual popcorn than it really did, but it's just different enough to be interesting! 

My first thought was to salt it and eat it like tiny popcorn, but that would have taken me all day.  I found out that you can add nuts and fruit to it and eat it like cereal, which is what I did!  I really liked it, even though it tasted kind of odd.  I don't know if it was actually odd-tasting, or if I just kept on expecting it to taste like actual popcorn.  It was a bit like unsweetened Sugar Smacks, if that makes even a lick of sense, but I added some Splenda (I know, I know) strawberries and almonds, and poured milk over the whole mess.  It was awesome!

I don't know if I'd want to go to the trouble of popping the seeds every morning, but it definitely was a good, and surprisingly filling, breakfast.  The smell is still kind of lingering through the house, which isn't so great, but I'm hoping that will go away before this afternoon.  Eventually, I'll get brave enough to make the porridge, but I can't imagine liking it better that way.  Seriously, you should try this stuff!  An entire ancient civilization of human sacrificing Indians (ahem - indigenous peoples) can't be wrong!  :)

WEBSITE- No specific website, but online recipes abound!

SERVING SIZE: 1/4 dry, uncooked, but it bulks up like crazy no matter what way you cook it.
CALORIES: 186
CARBS: 32
TASTE: Very good!  If popped, it's nutty, popcorny, and like unsweetened Sugar Smacks. The texture is also fun!  Cooked the other way...I'm not sure.  I'm still too scared to try!  :)

Bible Bread

Not far from where I live, there is an old health food store called Pearly Gates.  The store itself is old.  Well...not like, it-used-to-be-a-general-store old, but it opened in 1968, and moved to it's current location in 1972, which in my opinion is old!  It is dark and crowded, and sells the most bizarre collection of stuff I've ever seen in one place.  The shop boasts a stock of 750 different spices, herbs and other unusual ingredients that I've never heard of, all in mismatched containers lining one wall.  They sell obscure health foods, wine and beer making ingredients, incense, natural cosmetics and medicines, and strange ointments and teas marked with Chinese and Japanese writings that I don't at all understand.  There is also a small collection of occult items, altar bells, and things that baffle my Southern Baptist mind.  I've often joked that any Hogwart's student could walk in and buy any and all of their potion ingredients there if they wanted to!  I think of it as the local Wiccan Super Store.  I absolutely love the place!  Sometimes, while the husband is visiting the local comic book shop to pick up his latest Green Lanterns, I walk down and peruse it's musty shelves, hoping to find some new and unusual thing to try.  I'm never disappointed!


While looking around the shop last Saturday, I picked up a few things.  Most of it was just bulk grains and tapioca balls, nothing to write home about, but the one new item I'd found to try was something called Bible Bread.

Wait, that doesn't sound grand enough.  You kind of have to imagine a loud, deep, echoing voice from the heavens saying the name: BIBLE BREAD!  Well, at least that's how I imagine the name being said when I look at the box.

Anyway...BIBLE BREAD is not really a bread-bread.  It's actually more of a cracker.  The box describes it as being "Inspired by a 3000 year baking tradition going back to the time of the Exodus, when the Israelites, in their flight from Egypt, prepared unleavened bread to sustain them on their journey to freedom."  Of course, it isn't the original recipe...oh no.  The makers of BIBLE BREAD added "Tasty, natural flavors mentioned in the bible."  Um...yum?  I don't know how I feel about that.  The bible talks about John the Baptist eating locusts, and you don't get much more natural than eating bugs.  Horf!

Luckily, the ingredients listed are completely bug free!  BIBLE BREAD is made of wheat flour, water, rye flour, corn starch, oat fibers, rice, oat, corn, sesame, salt and natural spices. 

The crackers themselves are largish, rectangular, and thin.  They remind me of Wasa bread or matzo or something like that, but much thinner.  They are very dry and brittle.  The box also mentions that BIBLE BREAD is all natural, with no preservatives, no artifical colors, low fat, cholesterol free, sugar free, dairy free and saturated fat free.

Unfortunately, the box doesn't say that they are also taste free, which would have been more useful.  I've literally eaten bits of cardboard that had more flavor than these crackers.  I'd say they are almost bitter in taste, but that would imply that you could actually taste something when you put them in your mouth.  I had to grab a mini Babybel to go along with the ones I had for a snack, just so that I could convince myself that it was actual food I was eating and not a deck of playing cards.  I didn't enjoy them very much, but I have a whole box of them that I'm going to have to figure out how to eat.  Such are the pitfalls of the adventurous food buyer, I suppose!

Actually, these might not be so bad if you used them to eat dips or melted cheese, or something that had a noticeable taste, but in my opinion, you'd be better off with chips or real bread.  The website also says that they have different flavors, so maybe the plain kind just don't pack enough punch.  I'll definitely try and finish the box, just so that they don't go to waste, but I'm not looking forward to it.

I wish I could have liked these, I really do.  I mean, if Moses and his people could live off of stuff like that for 40 years of desert wandering, you'd think they'd be good enough for me as an afternoon snack!


WEBSITE- BIBLE BREAD
SERVING SIZE: 2 crackers
CALORIES PER SERVING: 90
CARBS: 16
FLAVOR: 0