A lot of us get into a rut of eating the same things day after day. Yes, it’s simple but it doesn’t always help out your taste buds and keep them entertained. It also doesn’t help to round out the vitamins and other nutrients in your diet. Every food has different levels of nutrients so by eating a few foods all the time, you could accidentally end up eating too much of one thing and not enough of another.
By mixing it up, you keep your taste buds happy and you typically work in a wider variety of nutrients that your body needs. This helps keeps cravings at arm’s length and makes sticking to your eating plan easier overall. Pretty cool, huh? I love this kind of thing. You can become a crave killer in just a few simple lessons. 😉
The other day I was at Target and I found something new that I wanted to try out. It’s from their Simply Balanced line that’s their take on healthier eating choices. I grabbed a bag of their whole grain medley which is a mixture of brown rice, rye, bulgar, red quinoa, and wild rice. I was hungry and it sounded pretty good. I also haven’t had brown or wild rice in forever, so why not.
I used it to throw together a quick salad that goes great with grilled chicken, and can be served hot or cold. It also goes with the theme that I talked about last time. You can start the grains steaming in your rice steamer and multi-task while making dinner.
Ancient Grain Blueberry Walnut Salad 
- 1 cup (200g) Simply Balanced whole grain medley
- 1 cup (110g) diced celery
- 1 cup (124g) sliced zucchini
- 1 cup (148g) fresh blueberries
- 1/4 cup (30g) chopped walnuts
- 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
- 2 Tbsp lemon juice
- 1 Tbsp horseradish mustard
- 1 Tbsp honey
- 1 Tbsp walnut oil
- 1 tsp salt
Cook the whole grain medley according to package directions. While the grains are cooking slice your celery and zucchini, and parsley. Mix the veggies, blueberries, walnuts, parsley in a large bowl and toss to mix.
When the grains are done, add to the bowl and toss with the lemon juice, mustard, honey, walnut oil and salt. Toss well to blend.
Makes 4 very large servings at approximately 307 calories – 7g protein, 50g carbs, and 10g fat.
Notes
- You can use any kind of grain in this recipe if you don’t have the whole grain medley I used. Farro, wheat berries, brown rice, quinoa, couscous, and so on would all work well.
- Change up the berries and the veggies if you don’t like the ones that I used. Cherries, strawberries, blackberries, carrots, grape tomatoes. You get the idea.
- I used horseradish mustard because that’s my latest addiction. Other mustards can be used instead. You can also use a different nut or leave the nuts out, and use olive oil or another oil in place of the walnut oil. Use what you have is what I always say.
I had mine hot the first night with grilled chicken because I couldn’t wait. I had it cold the next day and it would be a great salad to take along to a picnic. The servings are quite large servings if you opt for 4 dishes. You could easily cut the servings and get 6 – 8 servings from this for fewer calories if you’re watching out for that.
This isn’t a sponsored (or any other kind of post) recommending Simply Balanced items. I just happened to use that for my recipe and since it wasn’t a standard blend of grains that I used, I wanted to post the brand in case you wanted to recreate this exactly. It’s not needed for this recipe as any grain or grain blend can be used in its place. 🙂
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