Whole Lotta Whole Grains

Millet.
What is millet you say.
An ingredient in bird feed for one. But also a pretty awesome grain.
I haven't always been blessed to have the wide view of food I now have. Growing up my culinary exposure ran about as far as the San Francisco Treat and Hamburger Helper could throw me. So lets just say I had no idea about a lot of food stuffs.
One day I was invited to stay and eat supper at a friends house. All was well until I saw what we were having.

And as you can see by my beautiful illustration, her whole family laughed at my ignorance and I quickly found a good excuse to leave....then made sure to never agree to stay for a meal again for fear of not knowing what the hell I was eating.
Now thankfully I'm pretty proud to say I not only usually know at least a little something about most fruits and veggies and food stuffs in general but I'm pretty sure I can make a more awesome Eggplant Lasagna than my childhood friend's Mom any day of the week.

But that's not what this post is really about. This post is about millet and hopefully expanding your food knowledge. On one of my many ventures into health food I stumbled upon millet. At first I really didn't know what the heck to do with it except sneak it into things instead of rice or along with rice in order to bump up our whole grain intake. But eventually I started finding more ways to use it. One in particular is my very favorite way! It makes an awesome nutty tasting muffin that's perfect for breakfast on the run but especially good served with blueberry preserves.

Millet Muffins

1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

1/3 cup millet

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup soy milk (1tbs vinegar added) *or 1 cup buttermilk

1 egg, lightly beaten

1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce

1/2 cup honey

1/2 cup dried or frozen blueberries or cranberries

Directions:

1.	Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Grease 12 muffin cups.
2.	In a large bowl, mix the flours, millet, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl, mix the soy milk/vinegar mixture, egg, applesauce, and honey. Stir buttermilk mixture into the flour mixture just until evenly moist. Fold in dried fruit. Transfer batter to the prepared muffin cups.
3.	Bake 15 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean.

 So there you go! Healthy delicious and now you can say you know what to do with millet if you ever have the need to :)