Day 78

Wheatberries: This was another find from the salad bar at Whole Foods on Ponce yesterday. Luckily they let you try samples of anything on the hot bar/salad bar before you buy, and I noticed this dish after I tried the sample of seitan and took a sample cup home. I didn't know what a wheatberry was, but after the miserable experience with seitan (aka "satan") yesterday, it could only be better.

The stuff on the salad bar was some sort of mixture of wheatberries, beets and carrots. The appearance was similar to quinoa, and I wondered if the taste would be in the same universe. I opened up the sample cup today and took a bite, and the taste was extremely similar to quinoa - a nutty, crunchy grain-type kernel that served as a good filler in between the pieces of carrot and beet. It was OK, but didn't really taste like much. I deduced that wheatberries weren't berries at all, so I had to do a little research in order to figure out what they really were. In case you weren't aware, wheatberries are actually the entire wheat kernel, and they're often baked into bread or used in other dishes such as this one. They're also a good source of fiber, if you care about that sort of thing.

Not a bad vegetarian option, but I probably won't try this again - there just wasn't enough flavor for me to be interested.