Healthy and Delicious: Cooking with Whole Grains

Savory, sweet, and nutty all at once, this is a salad that can be enjoyed warm or chilled -- and is both hearty and seasonally suitable to make during the winter.

Yes, we know quinoa is a seed not a grain, but it often gets lumped with whole grains -- because it is quick to cook, had lovely fluffy grains, and is wondefully healthy: it's protein-rich and boasts a slew of nutrients. This cool salad of crisp, thinly shaved fennel, pungent parsley and dill, nutty quinoa, and a squeeze of fresh lemon is a refreshing dish year round.

This dish is not a pie in the usual pastry sense of the word, but this molded quinoa dish with roasted butternut squash is cooked in a pie plate, and is as hearty and irresistible in its own way as any dish with one crust or two.

Toasting quinoa, like with other grains, enhances its flavor, making it extra savory and nutty and a particularly good partner for a lively mix of cabbage, chickpeas, and olives.

These veggie burgers get their rich, earthy flavor from mushrooms and quinoa, and are topped with sharp radish sprouts and cool cucumbers. Greek yogurt is a zesty Mediterranean replacement for ketchup.

Maybe you've used pearl barley in soup before: Now it's time to try it in salad, where its rich, nutlike flavor and wonderfully chewy texture come to the fore.