The Art of Zen Living

I’m up a little late tonight, it’s been a bit of a crazy weekend - hurry up and wait, mostly.  Tomorrow morning, I start my vegetarian diet.  Earlier this weekend I made a batch of the Best! Black! Bean! Chili! Ever!, so I have it ready to go for the week.  If I could only give you only one tip about making any sort of drastic change in your diet, it’s this: have food ready so that you do not have to think about it.  It’s the thinking and choosing that destroys 99.9937264% (this number was made up completely out of thin air, but it has the ring of truthiness* to it) of diets.

Tonight I made a week’s worth of breakfasts - Barley Harvest Cereal.  Barley is one of the first grains ever domesticated by humans.  In ancient Egypt, it was used to make beer and bread.  For many Egyptians, that was their entire diet.  Today, barely is largely forgotten as a food - we use it mainly for beer and as animal feed.  It’s low fat, and has an extremely low glycemic index, which means it has very little effect on your blood sugar.  The result?  You stay full longer, and have more energy longer.  The other ingredients in this mixture were also chosen for their relatively low glycemic index - it ends up being a reasonable amount of calories, low fat, high fibre way to start the day.  Sitting down with a bowl of it also makes me feel somehow connected to those ancient ancestors, and to the earth.

Like bread, it doesn’t take long to put the pieces together, but you do have to come back to it a few times over the course of about 90 minutes.  I think it’s well worth it.  This is the second time I’ve made it, although it’s the first time I’ve followed the actual recipe.  The last time I made it with pecans, dried strawberries and bananas.  It’s a very flexible recipe that adapts well to a variety of flavors.  I think I’m going to try cranberries and almonds next!

Barley Harvest Cereal

* Servings: 6 1 cup servings
* Total Time: 2 hours

Store this nutritious cereal in the refrigerator and reheat single servings in the microwave. Add milk and fresh fruit to taste.

Ingredients

* 8 cups water
* ½ cup wild rice
* 1 cup pearl barley
* ½ cup steel-cut oats (Irish oatmeal)
* ½ cup raisins
* ½ cup chopped pitted dates
* ¼ cup walnuts
* 1 tbsp. butter (optional)
* ¾ tsp. salt
* ½ tsp. ground cinnamon

Directions

Preheat oven to 375°F. Simmer 2 cups water and wild rice for 20 minutes. Drain. Mix rice and all remaining ingredients together in a baking dish. Cover loosely with foil and bake until grains are tender, water is absorbed, and cereal is creamy, stirring occasionally (about 1½ hours).

* Truthiness is a term coined by Stephen Cobert on The Cobert Report, defined as “the quality by which one purports to know something emotionally or instinctively, without regard to evidence or intellectual examination.”