Introducing Grains to Family

In order to improve hubby & little girl's health, I'd tried all ways to introduce grains to our meals.

There was once I heard from my aunt that she cooked rice with barley, it is not only more nutritious, also enhance the taste of rice. I tried adding a bit of barley into rice, both of them didn't give me any fuss, and gradually I added more, and til now I added a handful of barley/wheat to a cup of rice. At the beginning, little girl asked me 'What is that?" meantime pointing to the cooked barley among the rice, after informing her that they r barley, she said she like it and since then she would question me 'why the rice is white today?' whenever I forgot to add in the barley/wheat =)

Here is the goodness of barley, sorry that it is in Chinese.

Then, one day, when I was buying barley, I discovered this wheat for making wheat porridge (mak chok 麥粥), I tried cooking it with rice too, it doesn't taste any different from barley.

Both barley & wheat r slightly chewy after cooking, u may need to chew a bit longer than rice, thus I believe it it a good excercise for our cheek too ;p

Here is the goodness of wheat, again it is in Chinese.

Little girl used to eat wholemeal bread since toddler until hubby introduced her the white bread, she started refusing wholemeal bread =( I explained to little girl about the goodness of wholemeal bread and even emailed hubby this link, then both of them have agreed on buying loaf of white and wholemeal bread alternately, phew! After started on baking bread, I'd always try to add in wholemeal flour too, but hubby always complain that the breads r dense & dry after keeping for more than 1 day. Hopefully with sifu Alex Goh's new book - Magic Bread, these problems may be solved.

Then, both of them dislike drinking leong shoi, especially those with strong herbal smell or taste. They even refuse simple drink like barley water * roll eyes * Therefore, I tried adding barley to some soups (like this one), at least they wouldn't give me any complains.

Do u have any interesting ways on adding grains to ur meals? Please do share with me.