Chocolate barley pudding
With toasted coconut.
You’ve heard of rice pudding. Here’s a more dimensional, nutritious version of it — chocolate barley pudding with toasted coconut.
Here’s how switching from rice to barley elevates this dessert:
More nutritious: unlike the white rice in rice puddings, barley is rich in protein and fiber. Enjoy a dessert that satisfies your appetite and nourishes the microorganisms eking it out in the deep recesses of your body. It’s a good way to support these little creatures that protect us and help us thrive.
More interesting: Barley isn’t a blank canvas. It brings its own nutty, woodsy flavors to the dessert. It brings more heft and texture too!
More resilient: Barley is one of the world’s first domesticated crops. It’s old and has seen everything. It makes an excellent cover crop to protect soil, important as we face a crisis of soil depletion in the US (and around the world).
Recipe:
Cook 1 cup barley according to package instructions. Once cooked, add 1 cup milk — any type of your choosing. I used 1% because I got a gallon of it for free. I don’t know why — the Gods of FreshDirect were smiling down on me. Then mix in a pinch of salt, 2 tbsps cocoa powder, 4 tbsps maple syrup and a handful of chocolate chips. That’s it! Chill completely. Option to serve with toasted coconut: put a handful of shredded coconut in a shallow pan on stove and toast for five minutes or so. Watch carefully and stir frequently.
I’m thinking of variations of this dessert too:
Toasted walnuts + chai spices like cinnamon and cloves + maple syrup
Toasted pistachios + cardamom + honey
Lemon zest and juice + coconut milk + honey
Rose syrup + whole milk
More on barley and whole grains:
Newsfeed:
Via Mother Jones, “Today, the US meatpacking industry is more centralized and monopolized than it was when Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle in 1906, leading President Theodore Roosevelt to break up the so-called Meat Trust.” So it’s heartening to see that workers secured wage increases and ended a multi-week strike against a major meatpacking plant in Colorado.
A li’l shoutout to this project from the Street Vendor Project: batteries for street vendors in New York City, a clean energy alternative to diesel.
Li’l Nubs:
Turnip rice
So I’m not into it when people are picky about food. But I understand sometimes you have to feed those people, especially if they’re children. Here’s a life hack I recently discovered: steam or boil turnips, then mash and mix in near the end of your cooking rice. The rice above tastes the same but has a whole vegetable in it! It does look mushier than plain cooked brown rice, but the extra nutrition is well worth it.
Love this concept!