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

We had tuna pasta bake made with wholemeal penne today. DS loved it & didn't realise it was brown pasta til I pointed it out. He said it was delicious & didn't seem at all bothered. I need to do this challenge all the time really. It's not hard to do. I've forgotten why we need to eat wholegrains though

Actually, I meant to say... this morning, DS was hungry. I asked what he wanted for his snack and he said 'Um, I don't know... something with wholegrains in'

Been reading all other posts with interest and will be getting some popcorn for snacks. Three over ripe bananas so will get some wholemeal flour tomorrow and make a banana loaf. Interested to see how oats in spa bol goes down to.

The bread is not going down well at all and tried wraps and bread buns but they do not like them. I had forgotten how nice a decent wholemeal bun was.

Going to search the websie linked to earlier and see what I can find to try this week.

As with everything in our house one liked the quinoa and lamb patties and the others didn't. Dh thought it needed more Harissa paste, ds1 really liked it and dss and ds2 ate it but under sufferance! I really enjoyed, could have eaten more :)

An update on our challenge. The 50:50 bread was a success and eaten all up. The banana muffins (from earlier in the thread) were really yummy and didn't last long and the kids also liked/didn't notice wholemeal flour in their pancakes.

I tried giving the DC plain air popped popcorn (which I like and I thought was 'healthier' than the sugar/salt versions) but they weren't impressed so I may have to try the sweet version with them. The fruity oatcakes from the website were not a hit with the DC but I thought they were ok (although I think they tasted better on day 2), however I'm not sure I would recommend them/make them again.

Carrot cake made with wholemeal flour is really good. Hugh fearnly has a great recipe for it

I adore 50/50 bread, as do the DCs. Hardly ever buy it though as it's expensive (we are normally getting value range!)

Quick update on our challenge, the Middle Eastern lamb/quinoa burgers were lovely and we all enjoyed them yesterday. Today's wholemeal portion will be the 50:50 bread as sandwiches tonight.

Didn't want to alter our regular Sunday Roast this afternoon (as DCs enjoy it so much )

Planning on using the brown rice tomorrow, it is brown basmati rice. Going to make a Chicken Biryani.

So Friday I tried quinoa and bulgur wheat as an alternative to rice... not a success. Think it needs some sort of spice/flavouring to make it more palatable - time to raid the recipes. But on the plus side, it was a brand called Pedon that only took 10 mins to cook and they have other 'grain' stuff to try, so that makes it much easier to incorporate into the meal. And it was on offer in Tesco so that was a bonus.

Saturday, we used wholemeal tortillas as pizza bases, grill them and then fold them in half, they went down well. Today I made the low-sugar banana and oat cookies (MN recipe of the week) with our 2yo, who has given it the thumbs up. DH and DD yet to sample them but I'm confident DD will like them, and we can do them in lunchboxes as a healthier alternative 'pudding'.

I'm not an official tester but we've tried to up our wholegrain intake since the New Year. We are eating a lot of porridge in this cold weather and our favourite tip is to add blackberries, a spoonful of brown sugar and some sesame seeds to the porridge as it's cooking. Delicious. Oh and following a money saving tip by adding a couple of spoonfuls of porridge oats to casseroles and stews to make them go further and give the children an extra wholegrain boost...the children haven't noticed a thing .

So what can I do with a load of cooked bulger wheat? I am very tired and misread the packet.....

It was nice with stew though, sort of like couscous really, just soaked up the flavour of the stew. I prefer orzo pasta though for that with stews.

And I mean lots and lots of leftovers by the way.....

Well we've had turkey burgers made with wholemeal breadcrumbs this week, wholemeal pancakes, DH has been eating wholemeal bread and we've ALL been having porridge for breakfast. Brown rice is something we have at times anyway (ignoring DH's protests).

I'm finding I have to be careful with DD (2) as wholewheat things fly through her poor tummy like lightning. I recall DS was the same but now at 5 he's fine. This coming week we'll be having oaty pork stew and anzac biscuits.

Not been doing too well with dinners this weekend as we ate out on Saturday and had roast gammon today but we have been keeping up with whole grain breakfasts and lunches. Dd loving whole grain crackers with cheese ( Foxes I think) and DS liking oaty breakfast biscuits.

Did lots of baking this weekend and the wholemeal cheese scones and banana muffins have been going down well.

I'm a tester, have done whole grain bread and pasta, and checked that the cereals we bought were whole grain. not gone over to brown rice although that is another simple change we could have made so might be one to do this week
and also more oats!
Have to admit dont think we have managed to get whole grain into every meal, but have been thinking about it more

We tried the wholemeal chicken pitta off the website. It went down really well too. I swear my kids pretty much eat anything though, but they were very tasty! Switching is definately easier than I thought. We had porridge for breakfast today too.

Fell off the wagon a bit over the weekend as we have eaten out a lot.

However Friday did a beef in red wine stew which we had with whole grain bread and I put brown rice into the stew, we don't like barley. That was good. I wondered if lentils are whole grain- must look it up.

Breakfasts were again covered by cereals which was fine. Went for the whole grain bread again with our meals out although, given a choice, DD grabbed the white.

Am going to mix 1/2 white/whole meal flour for pancakes later.

Update: I've had a bit of a squiffy tummy as has dd and I'm not sure if it's down to all this extra fibre or not. Certainly no-one in our house is constipated at the moment and we are using more bog roll than is usual!

So I've discovered breakfast biscuits by McVities which are ideal for me as I find it hard to eat breakfast. They are made from oats so probably contain my daily dose of fibre. The kids meanwhile are happy with their porridge and toppings for breakfast.

I have changed our weekly pitta breads to wholemeal as that was a change that no-one noticed much. I'm also going to buy Walkers Sunbites instead of crisps as they are lovely and are wholemeal snacks.

The wholemeal pasta and rice were not hugely successful so I don't think we'll be buying anymore of them.

Frying is now done with Crisp n Dry which is the cheapest rapeseed oil I've found.

Over the weekend we did try the carrot cake recipe using wholemeal flour and it was a success. It's darker than usual but there really is no difference so I might try and use wholemeal flour for other things such as pastry and so on.

All in all we have changed the way we eat and it's been useful to make these simple changes that could actually have a huge impact on our diet. I didn't realise how little fibre I was eating until I started this so it's been a real eye-opener and I will make more of an effort to eat healthier.

I do think you ought to warn people about the rather smelly consequences of eating loads of fibre though! I'm not going overboard anymore but I do ensure that I eat at least one portion of fibre a day and the kids have around two.

Official tester and finally got my voucher this weekend, so put it to good use in Tesco yesterday...

DH and I both have wholemeal pittas with hummus for lunch today. Yesterday everyone had wholemeal granary rolls with our soup - kids are used to wholemeal/ 50:50 bread anyway so this wasn't really a change. We had chicken pie last night (with non-wholemeal pastry - never mind!) and will be making leftover chicken into egg fried rice with brown basmati rice for dinner tonight - fingers crossed!

So a bit slower off the mark than most but we're getting there... need to do some baking and get some wholegrain snacks sorted for DS1 and 2 - age 1 and 3. Carrot cake sounds good. I had a sugar-free banana loaf recipe that I might try to dig out and try with wholemeal flour.

Marking my place, we haven't officially started yet as DS and I are pretty poorly, both not eating, both on antibiotics
I'm hoping to start at the weekend.
I hope this thread stays open long enough for us to still do the 2 week trial.

Thank you for selecting us x

Week 2 of the challenge here for us. Not a great weekend for wholegrain with our evening meals but still managed to have breakfast and lunches with it.
We are having cheats pizza tonight as we need a quick tea before dog training class.
That's just using pitta bread with tomato puree cheese and whatever toppings kids want (will be wholegrain pitta).
I have found a recipe for quiche with a rice crust, has anybody tried it? Not sure and I have spent my voucher so don't really want to waste money on ingredients if it's not very nice?

Oh right, I forgot it was for 2 weeks.
I don't think I will be using wholegrain for our main meals but I will continue to use it for breakfasts and lunches and will try some more of the recipes. If nothing else, some of the cake recipes give the kids something to do and they make nice packed lunch treats too.

Might try making flapjacks although mine are either too hard or too soft and crumbly. Has anyone any tips for getting the consistency just right?

Back to weekday breakfasts for week 2. For lunch I tackled some of the leftover bulgar wheat and reheated it in the frying pan with a ladle of chicken stock and some pilau rice seasoning, a handful of frozen prawns ans some mangetout. Was nice.

Dinner was chicken pasta soup with barley in it and wholemeal pasta.

Chicken biryiani tonight with my brown rice - it was lovely and not much different to using white rice. Shame DCs did not like it though ........

I have been eating my Fruit and Fibre cereal for breakfast (but I would usually have this some days anyway)

Also DD has helped me to make Cheese Scones with the wholemeal flour after school today and they are rather good Wholemeal ingredients are almost gone eek but I suppose that is a good thing

I am one of the 50 tester and I cooked my family the Middle Eastern lamb & Quinoa Patties and my son didn't bat an eye lid result .. ! Its easier than I thought to get wholegrain into my families diet.