Buying (Some) Food in Bulk

Just thought it might be helpful to those out there to know where we get our grains from since I'm going to be talking about our journey through pancakes pretty soon.

We get our hard red winter wheat (our primary grain) through LDS Distribution.

Long-grain brown rice, kasha, oatmeal, and most of our legumes come through Wal-Mart.

Specialty grains like millet and red lentils are acquired through a local health food store.

We're trying to find a source for buckwheat, rye and short-grain brown rice. When my husband worked downtown, he was able to purchase 40 lbs of short-grain brown rice at an Asian grocery store. It worked beautifully and I felt so sad when we finally used it all up. I love short-grain brown rice. Its stickiness makes it a perfect substitute for white rice in so many ways.

I think we're going to try Bob's Red Mill, though we may also go with another distributor we've been hearing about. Once we decide what we're going to do, and actually have the grain in our hot little hands, I'll blog and let the world know if it worked or not.

So, why on earth do we do this? We've found that grinding the grain ourselves (or soaking and sprouting the grain) has helped our health tremendously. Whatever extra cost is involved in buying that much at once is offset both by the return in the food itself (cost per ounce) and the fact that it fills our stomachs more than processed grains/foods. We've also found that having a wide variety of grains is crucial to following this plan of buying grains/legumes in bulk. Without the wide variety, you not only miss out on crucial nutrients but it just gets boring. Wheat is pretty versatile, so it's not too bad, but still... there's only so much soaked/sprouted/soured wheat a person can handle.

Tomorrow I'm going to start talking about our Thanksgiving plans.