Amaranth Porridge with Stewed Rhubarb

Amaranth Porridge with Stewed Rhubarb

I shared a post last night on Instagram saying that when I first started my health journey many years ago I struggled to digest probiotic foods. I realised based on the comments and some of my DM’s that I may have confused people a little bit. It has actually taken me a while to wrap my head around “gut health” it is a hugely popular topic nowadays and rightfully so as the gut is incredibly important for everything, but something about that mainstream advice I was hearing about gut health didn’t sit right with me. Although I think information is changing a little recently, I simply could never get behind elimination diets. Maybe it was because I started off so undernourished and poorly fed that it was obvious that the solution for me came from eating more foods and not less of them despite having many “inflammatory” symptoms. Over time, without knowing I healed my gut without even trying. The solution was to add more food, more fibre containing foods to be exact. We covered a pretty large section of my last unit in university on the gut microbiome and it is clear from the thousands of research papers in the area that diversity of plants containing fibre (fibre is only found in plant foods) feed out gut microflora which in turn helps heal the lining of our gut leading to less inflammation and less disease.

My gut got better by adding more plants to my diet, however, this is something I am STILL working on 11 years later. I am constantly looking for ways to add more plant variety into my diet. Although I don’t think there is anything wrong with eating a selection of regular meals that I love, every once in a while I try to focus on foods that I don’t eat or eat very rarely. That is how I came up with this recipe. Amaranth is a whole grain that I very rarely eat. I first tried it many years ago and hated it. I thought it tasted like dirt and I have been reluctant to try it ever since, but whole grains are one of the best sources of dietary fibre and therefore one of the best things you can eat for gut health and immunity so I was determined to find a way to make amaranth in a way that I could enjoy. I also very rarely eat rhubarb. My family didn’t cook with rhubarb growing up so I don’t really know what to do with it and am also quite confused about how to cook with it. I saw a huge bunch of fresh local rhubarb from Your Food Collective 
My online local farmers market, and decided to experiment with some stewed rhubarb to use as a jam to pour over vegan ice cream or porridge. It made a large batch that I put in the freezer in a glass container which I can quickly pop in the microwave to defrost if needed.

Although I still cant say that amaranth is my favourite grain, this porridge was a huge improvement over the last time I tried amaranth. Amaranth is also naturally gluten-free for anybody following a gluten-free diet, but even if you are not gluten-free, amaranth is great to add in for variety. Enjoy the recipe.

 

Get the recipe in my new book “Eating for Hormone Balance: a Plant-based Guide” Click this text to purchase.

 

 

 

 

Talida

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