Whole Grain Fusion

Cooking with whole grains is a new horizon for many.  For generations, we have grown up with Minute Rice and other products that are bleached and processed to the point of no return. On a recent shopping trip, I picked up a bag of a multi-grain rice blend called Healthy Expectations.  I have to admit that it made me feel good just putting this in the cart?  It looked great there along with the organic eggs. It turns out both are brown, not white. Who knew??

So, I get this big old bag of rice mixture home and I think to myself, "what am I supposed to do with this stuff?"  when a  sudden burst of creativity and unbridled imagination took over and ......I flipped the bag over and, to my amazement I found there a recipe, Quiche Lorraine with Whole Grain Fusion Crust. This sounded pretty inviting, so I decided to give it a go. After all, it does little good to buy healthy food options unless you also prepare them. This goes along the same line of reasoning that merely wearing a warm up suit does not by itself promote a toned tush and merely ordering exercise DVDs from infomercials does not create six pack abs. But I digress!

I was surprised to find that the rice does take about forty minutes to cook.  Once the rice is cooked and drained, simply mix with an egg and a 1/4 cup of Parmesan cheese to create the crust mixture.  Push this into a pie pan and bake for about 10 minutes. It then needs to cool off  for a bit.  While the crust is cooling  the filling mixture comes next.

I am not one to follow recipes completely so I created my own filling with a combination of  four eggs, caramelized onions and red peppers, reduced fat cheese and almond milk.

There are many combinations for quiche that include bacon, ham and sausage. For the calorie conscious spinach and broccoli are great choices.

I served this with a mixed green salad,  topped with craisins and slivered almonds.

I was very pleased with the texture of the quiche.  The substitution of the almond milk in place of the half and half did not take away from the flavor. In fact this was very light and fluffy. My husband like it too!  So there you have it.  Healthy Expectations, Mixed Grain Fusion, is a product that  I would recommend.

Who knows, perhaps this will inspire me to break out the warm up suit and dust off the DVDs!