*eating crow.

The mother is going to have a field day with this one. You see, she liked to feed us strange things when we were children. Bizarre things, like ... Well, here's a handy reference chart:

What you ate as a child

Spaghetti with meatballs

Pepperoni pizza

Honey-nut Cheerios

Red beans and rice

Peanut butter and jelly sandwich

What I ate as a child

Spinach linguine with cottage cheese

Whole-wheat crust pizza, extra sauce, no cheese

Rice Chex with orange juice, no milk

Millet and eggs

Apple stuffed with peanut butter

I mean, weird, right? But see, we didn't notice. We didn't really know any better until we got to school and were all, "DERwaitaminnit. This apple ain't no sammich." And I'm sure it was all EXTREMELY good for us and packed with nutrients, and we are abject ingrates for wanting fingernails stained with Cheetos dust, but you can't really depend on a 7-year-old for dietary judgment.

Eventually, we realized this weird-food bit was the kind of currency you just don't always get as a kid. Mother S has endured countless hours of our post-puberty torment on the subject. And neither she nor I may ever live down the Nutmeg Incident, which I think is the moment she decided to screw it and let us poison our bodies if we must, if only to keep her oldest daughter from spontaneously combusting.

So here, mother, for your reading pleasure, is my sweet, sweet comeuppance. There are grains in this recipe that we complained about for YEARS. And get this: It was damn good.

Oh, Mom, pipe down. People are trying to sleep.



I started with lentils, spinach, onions, fat-free plain yogurt (the Pube didn't have low-fat), garbanzos, olive oil, salt/pepper, a bay leaf, cumin, allspice, and turmeric. There in the front, in the pretty teacup (thank you, Grandma!), is some cooked barley, and in the back in the ominous-looking box is the Kasha (buckwheat). I KNOW.

I put the oil into the pot and immediately got distracted, so that I was shoving a handful of pretzels into my mouth before I noticed the smoke.

Oops.

The pot came off the heat to simmer the heck down, then in went the onions. After they'd sweated out a bit, I added the spices. Then T called, so I was shooting the shit and forgot to take a picture. Sweaty, pungent onions, and you missed them. The Kleenex are in the bathroom, if you need a minute.

Then I added the 6.5 cups of water, but that didn't make for a pretty shot at all. I mean, would you eat this?



Me neither. And I was a little worried about that much water. Usually you get the flavor benefit of a stock/broth in a recipe like this. Would it be bland? Would I be throwing away 7.5 servings of it in three weeks? I mean, tomorrow?

Next, I tossed in the beans, spinach, and buckwheat, and let that cook for a minute.



Then I pulled it off the heat for 10 minutes. In the last 5 minutes that it had to sit, I drained the yogurt between paper towels



and frantically threw in the barley, which I realized I'd forgotten to do three steps ago. Not much liquid came out of the yogurt, because it was pretty well dense to start with. But I scooped a tablespoon of it into the bottom of the bowl, and topped with the POTAGE. That's right, it's French. It means, "Big Brother and the Non-reader are going to give you HELL for having eaten and enjoyed buckwheat AND barley because how are we now going to present a united front in the battle to Give Mom a Hard Time due to the great Sugar Allergy Test Double Cross of '85?"



I don't know. But this was delicious. Like lick-the-bowl, no-I-won't-share, spit-on-your-neck fantastic.

I'm going to go eat an Oreo now.