It occurred to me a few weeks ago, when I came across a recipe for a Fresh Peach, Banana, and Warm Millet Smoothie in food justice advocate, chef and author Bryant Terry’s impressive new cookbook “Afro-Vegan,” that a smoothie is a great place for cooked grains. Adding them to smoothies is be a perfect way to thicken the drinks and bulk them up. It’s also a delicious way to incorporate more grains into your diet.

You can have a lot of fun with this concept when you begin to also think about colors, as these days you can find colorful grains like black and red quinoa and purple rice. I decided to match grains and fruits by color, using red quinoa with red grapes, black quinoa or purple rice with blueberries, brown rice with almonds and dates, and millet with pineapples and in a banana-strawberry-kefir blend. Now I’m drinking grains for breakfast, and they are hearty meals that get me through a swim and a busy morning. This should give you another good reason to cook grains ahead – you can keep them in the freezer, flattened in a freezer bag, and break off small amounts as you need them -- so they’re always on hand for quick, nutritious and easy meals. 

... it looks like a burger and it is a burger, but less than half of it is meat. The rest is mushrooms and beets. The recipe is inspired by a presentation I saw a few weeks ago, at Worlds of Healthy Flavors, a conference co-presented by the Harvard School of Public Health and the Culinary Institute of America in Napa, where corporate and executive chefs and other leaders from the volume food services industry come together with top nutrition scientists and world cuisine experts, nutrition communication and marketing professionals in an effort to expand healthy menu choices within their businesses.

Helping chefs with the challenge of cutting down on red meat and increasing produce on menus is an ongoing goal at this conference. To that end chefs have developed a mix made with roasted mushrooms that can stand in for half the meat in a burger. First you toss the mushrooms with salt, pepper and a small amount of olive oil, then you spread them on a parchment-lined baking sheet and roast them until they are tender and dry. Then you chop them finely, either in a meat grinder or a food processor. The chefs prefer the grinder for texture and also because the mix comes out dryer when ground. A food processor worked just fine for me. The mix kept well all week in my refrigerator, and what I didn’t use for burger variations and spaghetti sauce I used up in vegetarian dinners – an omelet, pasta, pizza and bruschetta.

Cauliflower is a vegetable that I have no qualms about buying on impulse. It keeps very well in the refrigerator – I have made perfectly good meals using florets I found lingering in my produce drawer that had been there for over a week. And it’s even more difficult not to buy when you see those beautiful multicolored heads in the farmers market. Sometimes they weigh a couple of pounds and you can use one head for several recipes in one week, as I have been doing.

I love cauliflower for its versatility. It’s happy in a warming stew like this one, one of my favorite North African tagines that I serve with couscous; or in a lasagna or any number of other pasta dishes, a frittata or pilaf, a gratin or a soup. It lends itself to curries and all things Italian, or adores a vinegary marinade. In one week I used it in a wonderful main dish salad with tuna, minced parsley and marjoram, a luxurious giant white beans from Rancho Gordo, and another, beautiful salad with carrots, mint, vinegar and olive oil. The humble vegetable can even be transformed into a vegetarian burger. I mashed it with potatoes and quinoa for some spiced patties that I coated with sesame seeds and served with Sriracha sauce. 

In farmers markets and abroad you might find an array colorful varieties of cauliflower, such as purple cauliflower, dark yellow “cheddar cheese” cauliflower, and green romanesca (it’s called romanesca broccoli but it resembles cauliflower more than broccoli).  If any of these varieties grabs your fancy at the farmers market or comes in your CSA basket, know that they can be used interchangeably with the more common white cauliflower.