Wheat Berry Salad with Olives and Tomatoes

Before I say anything else, let me just quickly say one thing: wheat berries are the greatest thing since before sliced bread. They've been around pretty much since the beginning of time, and since they are a primary ingredient in bread... but I digress. People are all talking up the awesomeness of lentils, of black beans, of all sorts of other foods (they are also good. I'm not saying otherwise.) that are a good bang for the buck. Well, forget them. I bought wheat berries at Whole Foods yesterday for $.69 a pound. Organic. I splurged, and bought a pound and a quarter for just under a buck. Then all I had to do was figure out what to do with them.

What exactly are wheat berries you might ask? Well, let me tell you everything I've learned about them in the past few days while browsing the internet/my cookbooks/ while I could have been being a productive member of society in some other way. Wheat berries are the whole grains of wheat with the husks removed. In order to cook them, they need to be soaked overnight, and then cooked for about an hour.

There are two main varieties from what I can tell: hard and soft. The hard wheat is typically ground and used for making breads while soft wheat berries don't have quite as strong a flavor, and are used in pastry flour. I bought soft wheat berries because they were forty cents cheaper per pound. (A penny saved is a penny I can save up to pay for my greek yogurt obsession). From what I read, they are also supposed to be easier to digest.

Wheat berries have all of the nutrients traditionally stripped out of commercial bread, and 7 grams of protein per serving. They can be used and substituted in recipes for rice or quinoa, or where one might use pasta (it sounds odd, I know). Wheat berries have a nutty flavor, and I found them to taste sort-of like quinoa and oatmeal combined. Only way better than that sounds.

Since I've now made the oatmeal reference, I was a little bit nervous heading into this week's recipe, because one of its suggested uses was in replacement of oats for a morning breakfast. While I think this would work, I think there must be far less starch in wheat berries, because there wasn't any stickiness in these, and a totally different texture, so wheat berries can go places that I would never go with oats... but anyways...

This week I made wheat berry salad. It's a really easy recipe as long as you remember to soak the wheat berries overnight, and are doing homework or something else around the apartment for the hour or so required for them to cook. (Once cooked, wheat berries can be frozen, so one of my cookbook authors recommends making large batches and freezing to avoid the long prep process.)

I altered the recipe from a WeightWatchers.com recipe I found with the same name. Then I changed it all. If anyone is reading this who is currently following WeightWatchers, this recipe is 6 PP (PointsPlus). It makes 4 servings of over a cup each.

Ingredients:
1 cup wheat berries, soaked overnight in water
2 medium tomatoes, seeds removed and chopped
40 black olives, coarsely chopped (This was the majority of a can of black olives. I didn't want to use the whole can, but if you really like olives, go for it.)
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon dried basil (I didn't have any fresh ingredients, and other than the missing color that it would have provided, dried worked just fine thank you very much.)
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar


Directions:
1. Rinse the wheat berries, and discard the water they were soaking in. In a medium size saucepan, add the wheat berries and about three cups of water. Bring to a boil, then simmer for about an hour, until the berries are soft and fully cracked. As the wheat berries are about halfway through cooking, add a pinch of salt.
2. Drain the wheat berries and put into a medium size bowl. Add the tomatoes and olives, mix.
3. Add the garlic and basil.
4. Mix together the olive oil and balsamic vinegar, then stir into the salad.

Easy, right? So crazy good tasting! I can't wait to make more with wheat berries. They're awesome. I can't believe that I'm writing this, but this blog is totally working. I'm starting to feel more and more like I'm learning my way around the kitchen, and figuring out this whole cooking thing. And the scary thing is, I'm liking it more and more too... who could have known?