These Beans and Barley Oh... or Something...

Does anyone else remember a song that goes "something beans and barley oh?" Or am I the only one? Even Google has no idea what I'm talking about.

Anyways, I tried cooking pearled barley for the first time this week. An AllRecipes magazine I got from a friend had an article about those crazy new grains (like amaranth and a bunch of others) and how to cook them. I hadn't heard about eating straight barley before; I thought that was something that people ate a long, long time ago that had since fallen out of favor. 

But not all the new grains are popular everywhere you go. Last weekend when we went to the grocery store here in the mountains I wanted to get quinoa or something like it. I said "Do you have matzos and quinoa?" to one of the managers and he said, "Uh... the what?" I asked again but added, "It's like a grain, like rice." So he showed me the rice aisle where I found pre-cooked quinoa in single-serve bowls. Nearby I saw bags of organic barley and thought, "Hm..."

My housemate, Ryan, suggested that we make barley with vegetable soup for dinner one night this week. He'd bought a couple cans of Campbell's and is really good at keeping a mental list of what we've got in the pantry. Last night I started cooking the barley and realized that it would take almost an hour including the time it took to boil the water. So while it was cooking I made spaghetti and we ate that instead.

Today we added the cooked barley to the soup with a couple slices of sharp cheddar cheese. We served the soup with salty crackers, toast, and the rest of the cucumber and tomato salad I made two days ago.

The soup wasn't great. I'm not really a big fan of Campbell's, or of canned soup for that matter. It's so loaded with sodium even when it tastes pretty bland.  The barley was great though; very chewy and with a nice snap. It had a subtle nutty flavor. All in all it was a filling meal and I'm happy with it.

My dessert was the best part though. I'm not sure when I started doing it, but I once decided to have a peanut butter sandwich without the bread. I put peanut butter, whatever jelly I had in the fridge, and Nutella in a bowl and mixed it together. It's basically a combination of different types of sugar - how could it not be delicious? Sometimes I add banana slices or pieces of fruit; whatever I have in the fridge. It's like an ice cream sundae without the ice cream. Soooo good.

PB & J in a Bowl

Pretty self-explanatory, hm?

Happy munching!