NOW CLOSED Wholegrain Goodness challenge: add your feedback here and be in with a chance of winning supermarket vouchers - open to non-'official' testers too - prizes to be won

[TheOtherHelenMumsnet]

If you're one of the 'official' 50 MNers who are taking part in the Wholegrain Goodness challenge, then this is the feedback/support thread that we'd like you to post on throughout the challenge. Each of the 50 MNers who post their feedback during the challenge will be entered into a prize draw to win a £150 supermarket voucher of their choice.

If you're not an 'official' participant but want to take part in the challenge anyway, or just have wholegrain tips and ideas you'd like to share, then please add your comments below. All non-'official' participants who post their thoughts will be entered into a prize draw to win a £100 supermarket voucher of their choice.

The challenge is to include wholegrain in at least one meal or snack for your family per day for two weeks, using a variety of wholegrain foods available (e.g. porridge, popcorn, oats etc.). To help, you can visit the Wholegrain Goodness website for their guide to wholegrain, for tips on how to identify wholegrain and for wholegrain recipe ideas.

The challenge starts on Monday (21 Jan) and we hope that participants will post here throughout

Please add your feedback on the following here:

~ Please share any tips and ideas you've discovered while taking part in this challenge e.g. have you found any good ways to encourage your child(ren) to choose wholegrains?

~ Have you discovered any recipes or tasty on-the-go wholegrain snacks that your family really like?

~ Have you tried out any Wholegrain Goodness recipes? How did you and your family find them?

Please add any other comments you have too - we'd love to hear from you at various stages of the challenge.

Thanks
MNHQ

I added cannellini beans as suggested PatTheHammer and thought it was a nice addition :)

We're doing really well with breakfasts and lunches - the DC were always weetabix/malt wheat fans anyway and I've found the most delicious multigrain loaf in M&S for lunches - but I need to try harder with Dinners. I've swapped to wholegrain pasta which is going down well but we don't have pasta everynight so I need to get a bit more adventurous.

Going to do these tonight.

I think the wholegrain lunch is definitely curbing my appetite and I'm snacking a lot less in the afternoons which is really good for my diet. I was a little worried that DS would get constipated as he always has seemed to when we've had a lot of wholegrains in the past but he seems fine so far.

I never realised how much cooking quinoa needs! 20 minutes simmering, 10 minutes soaking - so that's half an hour before I've even started on the chicken!

This is NOT a quick mid-week meal

Checking back in with an update of how the family is doing eating more wholegrain on the challenge. The cheese and tomato flapjacks were a big hit and I ended up making another batch for lunchboxes.
Popcorn was also another favourite over the weekend to eat during the movies we watched.
Apple crumble on Sunday was made with half oats and half wholemeal flour, it gave a really nice nutty taste to it.
I have bought a bag of quinoa and given the mixed reactions to it so far on the thread will still give it a try. I found a nice recipe for a curry, soupy/laksa one pot dish so will do that tomorrow night. Saturday will be wholemeal pizza using the breadmaker for the dough and tonight is brown rice and dahl with a tomato chutney.

My baking aspirations have all pretty much flown out of the window this week with ds2 being a bit of a nightmare and now dd has a UTI and is very miserable indeed. So food is not high on the priority list.

To lower the tone (again).

I have noticed this week the farting has settled a bit for everyone, my our bodies are getting used to it all? BUT my poos are big, frequent and really sticky, it erm...makes it rather hard to get the last bits out when you have post baby ishoos in that region. I just did the mother of all poos and blocked the loo and had to go poking with a stick. So that was fun. Not entirely sure I'm supposed to eat so much wholegrain that I block toilets.

Don't know what is for dinner tonight. Everyone had wholegrain breakfast so we have a portion in us.

I already hate these chicken fingers and they're not even on a plate yet!

I left the quinoa to drain for ages and yet it was still really wet when I came to make the fingers and did not want to stick to the chicken at all. Whatever did stick has since fallen off since I started cooking them.

The look vile! The yellowy quinoa with the wholemeal breadcrumbs look like some sort of nasty skin complaint.

Dipping them in egg white rather than whole egg before going in the quinoa/breadcrumbs is just wasteful and worthy to the point of nausea.

Did I mention they look awful? I cannot see these going down well - even I am glad I'm going running so will be eating later as it means I can swerve them!

That's a shame, they look so lovely in the picture!

My packet of quinoa is still unopened, I can't work out what to do with it really.

Thankfully, they look a bit better cooked and taste better than I imagined but...I cooked the quinoa in chicken stock rather than just water to give it more flavour, I used a whole egg to coat rather than just egg white and (and this is where it gets a lot less healthy eating) I cooked them in butter and olive oil which I think helped a lot.

DD has turned them down at a glance. I'll see how DS gets on.

Eat anything DS is peeling what's left of the coating off. Dinner fail

I recommend the middle eastern lamb and quinoa burgers Indith :)

The chicken does look lovely, sad to hear they were rubbish Blatherskite!

We might try the lamb burgers too! Tonight was a quick pasta wholemeal bake. I was short of time. I agree that breakfast and lunches seem really easy to do.

Blathers such a shame those chicken fingers didn't work out so well, I was hoping to make them too.

lily Still not made the Oaty Pork yet, maybe Saturday

Have made some flapjacks which didn't last long .....

Oh my goodness, you 'officials' are all so impressively dedicated! We take a pretty easy route in our house and probably all manage our recommended 3 portions of whole grain most days by just sticking with a few basics: breakfast always a good start & means (at least) one portion covered as plenty of choice too: weetabix; porridge; shreddies; muesli etc and/or wholemeal toast so usually something to please most...? Whole meal bread (except for occasional bacon sarnies!) and pasta (noone notices any difference once sauce is added); flapjacks/popcorn for snacks (even recently discovered unadorned fruit ryvita q popular!). Wonder if corn on the cob counts too? (sorry if previously covered, joining this thread at 11th hour so haven't read all comments). So by dinner time don't need to persuade kids to eat eg. brown rice or similarly more challenging fare...! Guess its finding what works for you & yours, right?

The oat cookie things were good. I made a Peach Crisp for pudding on Monday, with an oaty-flapjack type topping, which was predictably devoured. Monday, I chucked some barley/grain mix of the 10 min cook variety into some soup, which DD didn't like as her soup then had "bits" in, so I may blitz it in next time, though DS and DH didn't mind. Brown rice yesterday didn't go down well though. I thought it was pleasantly nutty, but DH said he'd eat it again if I put it on his plate but he wouldn't choose to. DS didn't complain but DD pushed hers about. We mixed weetabix and oats together for breakfast today, which the kids loved, though I may have opened up a dangerous world of cereal cross-breeding now...

Has anyone tried the Toad in the hole yet? Is it jut porridge oats I stir into the batter?

Just macaroni cheese with wholemeal pasta last night. Hardly experimental but very yummy. Even poorly dd managed a few bites.

Those burgers do look very yummy cinnamon. Sadly the household budget does not allow for such purchases as minced lamb.

I'm struggling a bit with cost now. Obviously wholemeal bread can be baked but with everything going on I've not managed to and the price of a decent (not horrible and dry) loaf of wholemeal is double the price of a decent white loaf so our lunches have rather lost their wholegrain portion this week.

Well our two weeks is nearly up.

We have managed most days as breakfast is always easy. The brown pasta was ok although I don't think we would always use it- depending on the sauce. A heavy meaty sauce seems more palatable than a light one for my family.

Similarly with the brown rice, white is so much lighter and fluffier, half and half works best for us and was best consumed as my special savoury rice as I add tomato purée. Maybe it's just a case of getting used to it. I have found the brown rice works well as a cold salad mix as its got a nutty texture and remains firm. I sometimes do a salad for me, like a copy of the M&s crayfish and mango one, and always mix wild rice in that anyway.

Made lamb Kofta last night using the middle eastern lamb patty recipe- minus the pine nuts. I added some mustard seeds and they were really delicious with whole meal pittas and a mint and yoghurt sauce. Oh and some fried onions. I have used some rapeseed oil in cooking this week too. I am slightly nervous of it tbh. My parents lived in Nottinghamshire and were surrounded by fields of oil seed rape. I found that I had an allergy to it when it was flowering. If I was outdoors and had touched anything then touched my face my eyes would swell up and shut and all the soft tissue in my nose and throat would become enflamed.

I'm sure this was the pollen and it probably has no corellation with the oil but I have taken it carefully just in case. No reaction so far.

Right, I cut down on the wholemeal and my guts seemed to have calmed down a bit. I figured that incorporating the changes I've made, everyone gets around 3 portions of grain a day.

Kids are now eating porridge everyday and dh has cereal too. I'm having oaty breakfast biscuits.

Lunch is usually sandwiches made with 50:50 bread for the kids or wholemeal wraps or pittas. Dh has granary bread because he's weird. I'm having wholemeal pitta or 50:50 bread as part of my lunch.

The main meal is where I am skipping the wholemeal as nobody much liked the wholemeal pasta and the brown rice as a complete no-no. However if I'm doing burgers I'll add some porridge oats.

I'm also using wholemeal flour for some baking where the colour of the cake doesn't matter. It's not much good for victoria sponge though. Or scones.

I use rapeseed oil for frying.

Adding porridge oats to crumble was a good idea and I'll keep doing this.

Also snacks, the Walkers Sunbites are really good.

I think that because I hardly ate any wholemeal stuff before, my guts just couldn't cope with the huge influx of it. Now that I've cut back they seem to be ok. It's easy enough to make a few small changes and we've done that so all-in-all it was a successful mission and has converted to some wholemeal foods.

Thanks for all your comments throughout this challenge, wholegraingoodness.com have ask me to post the following message:

"Hi MNers ? thanks so much for your passion and enthusiasm ? we're going to miss this ? it?s really lovely reading your messages and chat!

There's just a few days left of the 'official' challenge now, but this thread will be live until Sunday 10th March 2013, so those who've started late don't worry, there's plenty of time.

Small changes make a difference, so the challenge is to include wholegrain in at least ONE meal or snack a day only. One is great ? and if you want to (or do already) eat more that's great too!

We're not allowed to chat away with you on this thread ? we don?t want to intrude too much ? but there's loads of questions, so we've answered some on our website for you now ? Mumsnet FAQs ? and remember, we're really happy to chat and answer more from our website if you?d like, just Ask the nutritionist.

And finally? Recipes:
Thanks for all the great recipe tips and ideas so far, and for all the feedback to help us improve our recipes ? please keep this coming ? this will help us inspire others ? thank you! We believe eating healthily can be delicious and much easier than you think, and we work with skilled cooks and dietitians to create delicious and healthy recipes that are simple to make and good value for money. We?ve added some new recipes to our website for you from our new recipe booklet, including our Middle Eastern Lamb & Quinoa Patties, as there?s been quite a few mentions of quinoa, a wholegrain that?s rising in popularity. We?ve also added our Thai Turkey Burgers in Wholemeal Baps and Oaty Pork in Cider recipes and more! We'll continue adding new recipes as and when we can (oatcake topping ideas coming soon)! If you?ve tried our recipes you can rate them on our website ? just click the number of stars you?d give them on the recipe pages.

There's lots of positive feedback about wholegrain and the challenge, which is great to see ? thanks again for taking part from the Wholegrain Goodness team ? and keep it coming! "

Glad they explained about my excessive wind problem!

They were a little more delicate about it that I was!

Interesting about bulgur as it does appear on many lists of wholefoods. I find it quite confusing as a lot of things are sold in the wholefoods section of the supermarket that are in fact not. .

Indith we got the tesco value lamb and mutton mince, was £2.39 for 500g so not bad. It fed 5 of us and I had one pattie left over for my lunch the next day.

Will definitely be looking at the recipe booklet and give the turkey burgers a go :)

Official participant here! I have made wholemeal shortbread as a treat for the kids and they absoluely love it.

To be honest, its been a lot easier getting wholegrains into our diets than I thought it would be. My only bugbear is that the brown rice/pasta takes a whole lot longer to prepare than the white counterparts. Its a bit of a faff when I've been at work all day and just want to get dinner on the table.

DD (13months) absolutely LOVES shreddies though :)

Ooh, this thread might be better for me than I thought! I've seen a haematologist today who has said I have really, really low iron stores. I've just been looking up iron-rich food and wholegrains were on the list.

I am happy to report that the oaty toad in the hole went a LOT better than the chicken fingers.

I didn't have any wholemeal flour, despite having gone round various shops to try and get some today, but I did add a good handful of porridge oats to the batter.

If I hadn't have put them in, I'm not sure I'd have known they were there. I let the better stand before cooking and they were so soft by the time they came out of the oven that they just added a creamyness to the yorkshire pudding rather than being lumpy like I'd expected.

I used up the last of the batter on making some extra puddings which we had with Golden syrup and ice cream and they were just as yummy if not quite as healthy