Larry made dinner again tonight (yay!), and he bravely chose something from a cookbook I just got for Christmas from his dad. He did a great job finding ingredients (Whole Foods had amaranth) and the chili was really delicious. I loved the sour cream and we were surprised that we really liked the amaranth crunch.

Neither one of us had tried amaranth before, but the description in the cookbook says it’s earth and kind of grassy – and compares the texture of cooked amaranth to okra. Yuk! But this is toasted and it’s delicious. It’s about the size of mustard seeds. The amaranth crunch also calls for hulled pumpkin seeds, which we didn’t think we’d ever seen in a store, but now we think they’re labeled pepitas.

Larry also inadvertently discovered a shortcut in the recipe. As he added the two cups of uncooked pearl barley to the chili, he couldn’t figure out how it was going to cook in only 5 minutes (described in the recipe). I had just gotten home from work, and when I looked at the recipe I noticed that it called for two cups of cooked barley. Whoops! No big deal, we added some homemade vegetable broth I had on hand so the extra barley had something to soak up. It only took 20 minutes for the barley to finish cooking. I loved whole grains.

• Barley & Turkey Chili with Jalapeño Sour Cream and Amaranth Crunch (Whole Grains Every Day, Every Way, p. 186)
• Sourdough bread with Sauteed Garlic Butter (Fine Cooking #43, March 2001, p. 49)