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

[claredanes]

We usually have porridge in the morning anyway but I was feeling rotten this morning so I chucked wholemeal toast and jam at the DC instead. DH is going to be my challenge because the DC are already pretty good with wholegrain.

[nextphase]

Wholegrain pasta is foul, but I love brown rice - shame DH doesn't feel the same way.
We recently switched to half and half (pre sliced) bread, and (TMI) I can tell the difference it makes. I love granary bread, but that, and 50:50 bread seems to go off quicker than the while stuff. Any way of extending shelf life without compromising health benefits?

I too was shocked a few years ago that dispite eating a fair amount of fruit and veg, I wasn't actually getting much roughage (as opposed to soluble fibre - and it matters)

[thestylethatdecadesforgot]

Not an official tester but I have been trying to up our whole grain intake for the last 6 months or so. Porridge is very popular with us (and thanks to whoever mentioned adding frozen berries, DD1 will love that!). I also add porridge oats to crumble topping.

We always have malted grain/wholemeal/rye breads with white only rarely. I love the nutty taste. DH's mum is German so he's used to having rye and dark breads. The girls are used to eating brown bread from weaning on, so they don't protest!

We have pearly barley in soups and bulgar wheat tabbouleh kisir. I love th extra taste dimension with wholegrain things.

I have just bought wholemeal plain flour and made the batter for toad in the hope with it yesterday. It was just as light but really had a lovely taste. Thinking of trying muffins with the frozen berries again using wholemeal flour.

Reading everyone's ideas with interest.

Oh and also been popping our own popcorn, I didn't realise that was a wholegrain but it makes sense when you think about it! Health wise I don't suppose it's that great dipped in chocolate or covered with salt and sugar but never mind!

[MrsKwazii]

Evening all, it was 50:50 bread all round today for sandwiches or toast. DH and I also had brown penne pasta with pork meatballs and sauce tonight. I used wholemeal flour to bind the meatballs together too. I love brown pasta anyway so was happy eating it. MrK has eaten his but made no comment on it as yet I made a little bit too much pasta too so that I can have it with lunch at work tomorrow.

[poachedeggs]

We've all just filled up on delicious porridge (the DC have that anyway but DH did too today, hooray!) to fuel us for the trek to school, but we've just found out the school is shut! Proper drifting snow last night and the roads are filling in faster than the ploughs can clear them so we're all just going to have to go sledging instead - at least we've had warm breakfast! :

[THERhubarb]

I did look at the rapeseed oil but it's very expensive. I usually do what little frying I have with olive oil and put crisp 'n' dry in the deep fat fryer.

The 50:50 bread was well received but I'm not a huge fan. I prefer crusty loaves that you can cut into yourself so I might track down a wholemeal version of that for myself.

Kids have wholemeal pasta salad in their lunchboxes. Found a lunchbox recipe from the BBC Good Food and just altered it to suit. So they have a handrul of wholemeal pasta, peas and cucumber all mixed together. Drizzle over some lemon juice and add some grated lime rind. It's more of a summer salad but as it's so quick and easy to do, I knocked it up last night. We'll see what the verdict is when they come home from school.

Tonight we're having sticky pork ribs and I'll use the brown rice instead of white. I usually do sticky rice to go with this, not sure if brown rice will hold up but we'll see.

[DowntonTrout]

Had a problem with bread. The supermarket substituted my whole grain loaf from the bakery with rye bread. It had a really funny taste and when I looked on the ingredients list it had caraway seeds in it.

DD took one bite and virtually spat it out. I can't say I blame her. The caraway seeds had a very distinct taste and I'm afraid that's a waste of £1.60 as it isn't going to get eaten.

I'm finishing a box of special K red berries. It has whole grain claims but I suspect it's not the best. We have Cheerios for DD and am doing porridge after tomorrow.

[ClaraOswinOswald]

We tend to buy wholemeal bread anyway, with the exception of a nice fresh loaf of uncut white for bacon butties on a Sunday morning.

I mix wholegrain pasta and non-wholegrain pasta half and half, putting the whole grain in a few minutes before the other stuff. My children have never noticed.

They are not keen on brown rice, however.

[Lesbeadiva]

We are having whole grain pasta for tea tonight with some nice bread I will bake later too. Completely whole grain dinner! Carb overlaid, but in this weather who cares!

[Indith]

Don't know what to have for dinner tonight.

Dinner is the big one for us where I need to make sure there is wholegrain otherwise it isn't much of a challenge since breakfast has always been wholegrain!

Ds1 has lunch at school and 3 days a week Dd has hers at nursery so that will be hit and mix. I love the idea of popcorn as a snack, we do that sometimes at the weekends and snuggle down to watch a dvd. Not so practical when snack is eaten on the walk home from school!

I made oat muffins yesterday with fruit in which are very yummy.

Still very much snowed in so can only get to local shop so no wholemeal flour (or spelt or anything else) or pasta or quinoa yet.

Stew yesterday with barley in it which the children always love. Though dd developed a cast of the runs so just had white rice.

I might prod dh to make a mild curry type thing to have with some brown rice. Dd likes curry but I'll have to see how her bottom is. Ds1 is suspicious but will usually try anything.

[TheOtherHelenMumsnet]

Thanks to all who have posted comments so far - wholegraingoodness.com are really interested to see your feedback. They have asked me to post the following to answer some of your queries:

"Wholegrain Goodness will be adding new recipes from time to time, and have just added some more including Baked Barley & Butternut Squash Risotto and Smoked Salmon & Oat Baked Cheesecake.

To those who asked about vegetarian recipes ? there are now many more in Wholegrain Goodness recipes when searching for vegetarian under dietary requirements.

For MNers who already eat wholegrain every day, the 'challenge' will not be so 'challenging', but we'd still love you to take part and share any easy tips, ideas or advice to help inspire others. Sharing your feedback on this thread means you'll be entered into the prize draw to win a £100 supermarket voucher of your choice (or £150 if you?re one of the 50 'officials').

Finally, we wanted to share a top tip: as some of you have said, to help get wholegrain into your family's diet, try just adding a little to your usual recipes e.g. mix wild rice with long grain rice, wholemeal pasta with white pasta, or wholewheat flour with white flour. See here for more Wholegrain Goodness top tips."

[poachedeggs]

Hobnob Recipe

8oz porridge oats

1tbsp golden syrup

1/2 tsp bic soda

Mix the flour, oats and sugar, melt marg, syrup and water in a pan. Stir in bic soda and add to

Then mix well and make into smallish balls which you then put on a greased tray and flatten slightly with a fork. Put in the oven at 180 degrees C for 15 mins... and cool on the tray. The aim is to get them golden in the oven not brown.

[THERhubarb]

Drink recipe:

Take one can of cold Guinness from fridge.
Pull back ring pull.
Pour slowly into glass at an angle.
When you have poured 3/4 stop to let it settle.
Pour the rest in vertically.
Drink and enjoy.

Plenty of wholegrain in Guinness you know. It's made from malt and barley and stuff.

[Blatherskite]

I remembered that the kids have swimming tonight so Dinner has been changed to Baked potatoes which meant I needed something wholegrain for lunch. I picked up some wholegrain bread while at the supermarket earlier and had it just the way my Grandma used to serve it to me whenever I was poorly as a child - made up into Spam sandwiches

Not the healthiest lunch in the world I know but it was so good I went back for seconds!!

I'm quickly realising that I don't dislike wholemeal anywhere near as much as I thought I did and I definitely snacked less last night after adding wholemeal pasta to our dinner.

I picked up some wholemeal cous cous and quinoa while I was at the supermarket too. I really fancy trying the chicken fingers recipe I found here with the children.

I find the official Wholegrain goodness site quite hard to use. I chose "Dinner" from the drop down menu and it brought up 38 dishes but then a lot seemed to be cakes and desserts. I was a bit confused until I looked at the top of the page and noticed that it was showing 81 dishes again. It doesn't seem to keep the search perimeters when you flick through the pages which is rather annoying.

[florencebabyjo]

Hi, Just spent my voucher this morning and have made a batch of flapjacks with date puree for little ones lunch boxes. So looking forward to trying some new recipes this week. Have planned quinoa for dinner with vegetable ratatouille.

[lubeybooby]

I have received and spent my vouchers

None of the recipes in the book really appealed all that much and DD is vegetarian so I've just switched all white bread and pasta etc for brown and I've bought some wholegrain cereals, and wholegrain wraps.

all going well and enjoyable so far. Wholemeal pasta is taking a bit of getting used to but me and DD have re-discovered out love of wholemeal bread and DD loves the wraps.

My tip would be to try the wraps for kids lunchboxes, so simple and yummy!

[aristocat]

I am a tester and we were rather snowed in yesterday so were only able to have Wholemeal bread and 50:50 bread. School is open today and I have been shopping and purchased

Wholemeal Flour
Wholewheat Pasta x 2
Wholemeal Bread
Oats
Quinoa
Wholemeal Tortillas
Brown Rice
Fruit & Fibre Wholegrain Cereal

Total spend was £11.24 already

Today I have made a recipe from the Wholegrain Goodness website and it is a Fat Free Fruit Loaf. Very simple and easy to make, I like it. Will await DCs reaction to it after school



In answer to the questions .....

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?

TBH my DCs are not keen on wholemeal bread and prefer the 50:50 if given a choice. I intend to substitute wholegrain pasta and wraps for our usual choice and will report back with any problems.

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

We love flapjacks so I will be making some of those in a few days/at the weekend with DD. Will check out more recipes too as I want to use the quinoa soon.


Have you tried out any Wholegrain Goodness recipes? How did you and your family find them?
Yes, I made the Fat Free Fruit Loaf today and I love it. Not sure what DCs will make of it though. Will let you know.

[WhatWouldGrandmaDo]

I've got us a couple of loaves of granary wholemeal bread, some wholemeal wraps, popcorn, wholemeal spaghetti / penne, oatcakes and rapeseed oil. The oil was expensive and I'm happy to use it for now but really can't see myself forking out for it after this unless we all suddenly have boundless energy / health / glowing skin / shiny hair as a result...

Made these biscuits with DS1 during his snow day yesterday which have gone down well with all but not ever-picky DS2.

We are already quite wholegrain at breakfast time but less so at other meals. I must confess that the bread manufacturing industry has got me quite confused - I've been told that 'brown' bread is no more nutritionally valuable than white, it's just dyed / coloured (is that true?). I usually buy Hovis best of both (so like a 50/50) - which is presumably half wholegrain? I like granary so bought that but there's granary and also granary wholemeal so what's the difference there? I am a simple soul..

[androbbob]

Going to try the hobnob recipe as the kids love biscuits. Have also bought some wholemeal pasta and will mix it tonight with the normal pasta and see if they notice - spag bol, so should be ok!

Will make the fat free fruit loaf at the weekend and report back!

Breakfast is going ok - Shreddies are being eaten, made porridge for me and weetabix has been requested as well, so will buy some tomorrow.

Getting them to try brown bread is proving difficult and they did not like the wholemeal wraps. The Kingsmill Fruit and Fibre toasting loaf and the bagels though are popular.

[poachedeggs]

I've just realised only half of the hobnob review posted! I'll try again later from the PC but it's listed on the MN recipes section :)

[TheTempest]

we're taking part here, I have to say that DP and DD's all like and happily eat wholegrain. I think I'm going to be the one to struggle here. Have substituted wholegrain rice for our chicken curry tonight. Baby steps!

[TheTempest]

Love the sound of the baked barley and butternut squash risotto, might give that a go tomorrow!

[THERhubarb]

Don't worry poachedeggs I don't mind making half hob nobs. It saves me eating a whole one.

[Lilyloo]

Well the dc came home with empty lunchboxes yesterday so the wholemeal rolls went down well.
I have used the others today for packed lunches. We used the rapeseed oil to make burgers last night, nobody mentioned that either.
Porridge for breakfast again which was enjoyed by all. Not really noticed the subtle changes so far which is good. I love wholemeal bread anyway so happy to be getting away from white bread.
We are having sausage casserole for tea so no wholegrain there but I have made a batch of flapjacks so we will be having those for desert.