As I write this blog post, I’m slowly eating a cold whole grain salad of millet, bulgur, fresh red peppers, and carrots on a bed of spinach. Beneath the spicy sauce I’m pretending is salad dressing, there’s a subtle creaminess to this dish that is totally unfamiliar to my palate. With each mouthful, I differentiate between the flavors of the two grains I’m enjoying: No, that relatively assertive nuttiness is the bulgur, but that delicate bite with the almost bean-like chew? Yup, that’s the millet.

For those of you who followed my year-long “Me & My Whole Grains” blog series in 2009, you know that I’ve been slowly cooking my way through the 19 whole grains we feature on our website. I celebrated farro as number 13 in this blog post, then took on numbers 14 (amaranth) and 15 (buckwheat) as assignments for our Grain of the Month project in 2010. Millet brings my whole grain checklist to a sensational 16, leaving only grano, sorghum, and teff on my hit list! Yay me!

But more importantly, yay millet! This bulgur and millet dish I’m finishing even as I type was actually the second millet dish I made. The first was straight-up, unadulterated millet boiled in plain water without even the slightest hint of seasoning. In my mind, if you’re going to cook a whole grain for the first time, the point ought to be to truly taste the end results and really experience the grain for itself. Granted, that “naked” experience usually only lasts through the first few spoonfuls after cooking, but only because the next step of trying out a new grain is putting it through its accompaniment paces. Will buckwheat make a good grain to top salads with? Will amaranth pair nicely with freshly diced veggies? Will millet hold up to being reheated? See, the whole point of trying out all these magnificent whole grains is to add new flavors and textures into what I’ve always admitted can become a fairly stagnant eating pattern. And even when I don’t really know what I’m going to do with my whole grain experiments, I never have any doubt that they’ll be satisfying and savory additions to whatever (otherwise boring) lunch I’ll be eating.

Speaking of not really knowing what I’m doing, I had no idea that cooking millet and bulgur together, then letting it stand for a bit, was my funky twist on Lorna Sass’ “sticky millet” preparation. Yes, it’s right here on our web site, but did I read that before I said “Oh I’ll just finish chopping these veggies and get the spicy sauce together before I tend to that pot of whole grains”? Nope, I sure didn’t, which is why I was totally shocked to find the millet and bulgur mixture had thickened considerably. And by “considerably,” I mean I could’ve cut the results with a knife and served it like polenta “sticks” I’ve seen in fancy restaurants. Totally not what I was expecting – but that’s a good thing! It means it’s still a whole new whole grain world, even to me! (Kara)