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

Ok so the wholemeal bread is going down fine.
Yesterday for tea I did homemade burgers (no horsemeat for me thanks!) and included some porridge oats in the burgers which made them stick better together and to be honest we didn't even notice the oat in them once they were cooked.

Will try one the recipes over the weekend.

Vegetarian haggis recipe.

How can you have a veggie haggis?
Whatever next, vegetarian black pudding?

It should be illegal!

I am not an official tester but trying to be healthier after nearly a year of cancer treatment. I make my own muesli with organic jumbo oats, flax meal, organic dried fruit, organic flaked almonds and grape nuts. It has no added sugar but the fruit makes it taste sweet. A great start to the day!!!

It is a substitute for those of us having difficulty catching a real haggis in the snow, Rhubs.

[bgrin]

I haven't managed to make it to tesco with my voucher yet so did my shopping in a different supermarket.

I bought
Popcorn kernels
Porridge oats
Wholemeal rolls
Wholemeal wraps
Wholewheat spaghetti

We all had porridge for breakfast, which was not enjoyed by the children but i loved it. We made flapjacks with the oats as ell which went down well. The rolls and wraps were thoroughly enjoyed by everyone.
I used the spaghetti in a bolognese and by the time it was smothered in sauce and cheese i dont think they noticed a difference!
i will continue to make popcorn for the children as they had it in there lunchboxes as an alternative to crisps. I would also keep buying the wholemeal bread products as they were an easy way to increase the whole family's intake.

I think the best way to ensure that your children will eat wholemeal bread/pasta/whatever you want them to eat, is to eat it yourself and don't buy the alternative ie white. Start as soon as you can while they are still young enough to be forced malleable, and don't give up when they refuse it the first few times. Just keep on, and make it normal in your family. Use wholemeal flour where it won't be noticed, eg when making a fruit cake, or use sieved wholemeal flour in a chocolate cake.

Cinnamon spelt cookies in the oven. Must remember not to feed them to the baby as they have honey in. Ds1 is having a friend round after school for the express purpose of watching his Lego DVD he got for Christmas so I shall offer them some popcorn to go with it. Pasta bake for dinner which will be a mix of white and wholemeal.

I think that for me the kick up the bum to bake different snacks is the best bit about this challenge. Our diet in other areas was already good and often had wholegrain in it but I do get stuck into baking the same traybakes and cakes again and again.

Couscous question- some people have been talking about having it. Is all couscous wholemeal or is there a white version and a brown version? I usually see it in the wholefoods section but it doesn't obviously say that is is wholemeal. We eat a lot of couscous so if it is wholemeal then that would be great!

We seem to be doing pretty well. My children seem to eat anything so it's no big deal to switch. We ate more wholegrain Than I thought! Today it's popcorn movie night after dinner (which is sausages in wholemeal buns masquerading as hotdogs) and wine

Challenge gone well this week for breakfast and lunches. Great to see veggie recipes appearing - will have a look at these ready for weekly shop. Still not convinced that wholemeal pasta and rice will be any nicer than we remember. Will see if there are any other changes we can make for next week though.

Today DS has fried egg on wholemeal toast and popcorn. It's not hard to include wholegrain. If we all ate proper food instead of highly processed stuff like white bread & cereal then it wouldn't be an issue. But I love white bread and cereal

Had haggis for dinner tonight just to let kiddies try it and with very mixed response. DS2 was genuinely interested and asked for more, DD1 politely took a mouthful and looked at me as if I were trying to poison her, DD2 spat it out all over her plate and DS3 said, 'I'm not trying that, are you mad? ' and that was the end of that, oats or not! Any suggestions of how to recycle half a haggis?
Apart from dinner we had a good day with oat cakes for lunch and weetabix for dinner. Made salmon and haddock fishcakes tonight ready for tomorrow with lemon, parsley and rolled in toasted oats. Beginning to feel a bit more inventive and has been refreshing to have to think about how to add, and in our case, often hide the wholegrains! All good, though x

We made the oaty pork in cider and it was yummy! Had it with rice, dh who I was worried about, said he'd happily have it again. Dss loved it and ds1 and 2 ate with a bit of persuasion to try it in the first place! Both left all the leeks though. Making some of the cookie recipes tomorrow. Looking forward to trying quinoa tomorrow :)

Tonight was takeaway night so had to do wholegrain earlier in the day! But the DSs had wholemeal pasta with tomato sauce for dinner and didn't seem bothered. I didn't point it out and decided against mixing with white as that would've made it obvious! I tried a bit and it was nice.

We have stocked up on popcorn instead of crisps. It's going great. Don't notice any difference at all.
We've also replaced our white pastas with wholemeal. Also going swimmingly and DD hasn't complained which is great!
Wholewheat pitta breads were fine. No complaints at all.

Wholewheat bread however, not to DD's liking. And DP is craving white bread sandwiches!!!

Still, it's going pretty well and has been very easy to find substitutions for things that we would normally eat.

Pasta bake with a mix of white and brown pasta went down well.

I do notice the difference though and I am starting to get a bit fed up of everything being wholemeal, it is in general a bit heavier, a bit......just.....brown.

I am feeling a little uninspired today though. Ds2 has a horrible cold so after being up a lot at night with him the 2 of us slept in until 9am so the wholemeal bread is still rising and dh went out to get milk and bread and came home with white because the wholemeal was more expensive . It being the weekend the dcs have the choice of the more rubbishy breakfast things so while dd opted for toast and had wholemeal ds1 had rice crispies so has not yet had wholemeal. Lunch won't include wholemeal and I don't think dinner will either because dh and I are having curry and the dcs are having fish fingers. They can have flapjack or the spelt biscuits for afternoon snack.

Tomorrow will be slow cooked brisket with either brown rice to give that another go or bulgar wheat.

One week in I think that things we would keep are having more wholemeal bread for our lunches and having a bit more variety or simple biscuits etc for snacks. This coming week we will try bulgar wheat and quinoa so we will see how we like those. I'm not convinced but the rice and pasta though. I do love wild rice but it is far too expensive. We will continue to put things like barely in our stews and soups as we already do. I may try the trick of putting oats in spag bol next week too as an alternative to lentils though we tend to use lentils for the protein as well as the bulk.

Today though I just want cake. Chocolate cake with lots of goo. And I don't want it to be wholemeal!

• We use Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Wholegrain Seeded bread flour - we make all our own bread in our amazing Panasonic breadmaker and we think this is the best bread flour around!
• Sunbites are a super wholegrain snack.
• Brown rice and Wheetabix are also a good source of wholegrain for us.

I am making spag bol today but will try the wholegrain pasta mixed with white. I agree the sunbites are a tasty snack and a good alternative to crisps. I also bought large wholegrain couscous so will try that with a recipe soon. Want to make the lamb patties tomorrow. Also found oatcakes in the cupboard so that maybe tea or wholemeal pittas and humus. It is actually quite surprising the things that I use regularly are wholegrain anyway but this has definitely open my eyes to it.

We had haggis last night too at a Burns supper (not the children, just adults) lots of oatmeal and barley in that, and the cranachan too . Planning to use left over haggis to stuff roast chicken tonight. In answer to the question about whether all couscous is wholegrain, I don't think so, it's made from same wheat as pasta. Our current one is and explicitly says it's wholemeal. We had wholemeal noodles with stir fry the other night, didn't notice the difference from our usual non wholegrain ones.

That's what I thought about couscous. But what confuses me is that it is sold in the wholefoods section yet I don't think it is wholemeal . Those who have wholemeal couscous where did you get it? What does it say on teh packet?

Ah I've found wholemeal cous cous on the Tesco website, never seen it in ours though. When I was looking in Sainsburys I couldn't see any variety though, just cous cous or cous cous.

Another house who had an Oaty Burns Supper last night of haggis and cranachan. Also agree that sunbites are delicious - the sea salt ones in particular.

We've had wholegrain cereals for breakfast again here, and toasted wholewheat muffins with soup for lunch. I think that the brown muffins are much tastier than the white version, even DD likes them.

We are still having the porridge for breakfast but the dc's have been asking for a change so have been out for weetBix today.
They are happy with the wholemeal bread so beans on toast for everyone for lunch.
I am going to make the chicken tortilla stacks for tea as we all love fajitas so hoping they may be the same thing.

The banana loaf I made with the wholemeal flour was quite dense btw, but the moistness from the bananas offset it IYKWIM