A Gluten-Free Version of The Wheatena From My Childhood
A comforting bowl to support a quiet morning of reflection
My mom passed away on Mother’s Day this year. I't’s been a strange kind of grief. After a decade of watching her slowly decline and suffer from Alzheimer’s, her passing was filled with a mix of deep sadness, relief (a word I still have a hard time writing and saying), and frankly a bit of laughter—it felt so insane that she passed away on Mother’s Day that all I could do was laugh through my tears at this wild timing. As I wrote here, I’ve come to see the timing as a strange, unexpected gift.
I’ve been missing her a lot lately. Maybe more and more as time goes on. The tearful kind of missing her comes in tiny, sometimes weird moments. Like last night when I was getting cat food from a box next to a photo of her. I just stood there crying with cans of Royal Canin Renal Support in my hands.
As I do most mornings, I woke up thinking about her today. And as my thoughts slowly drifted into what I wanted for breakfast (because I’m never not thinking about food), I remembered the Wheatena she used to make me when I was a kid. One of my favorite breakfasts. I have a specific memory of lying in my parents’ bed one weekend morning when I was maybe five. I remember my mom bringing me a bowl of Wheatena and the glass of water next to me that I picked up and poured into it. I was watching this scene from Star Wars where Luke Skywalker was eating some kind of porridge. I guess I wanted to emulate what he was doing so I poured the water into my Wheatena and dug into a big bowl of my favorite hot cereal swimming in a sea of water.
Since I’m not eating gluten at the moment, I thought about how I could recreate this (this time topped with a creamy plant milk instead of water). I went into my pantry and found a bag of “Super Grains”—a mix of white and red quinoa, millet, and buckwheat. It seemed like the perfect nutty blend to mimic the Wheatena flavor. To amp up that nutty note a bit I toasted the grains and added some ground flax seed in hopes it would add a little more of that bran-like flavor. Making this felt healing and bittersweet—I always feel my mom (a former chef) in the kitchen with me, but on this slow, grey morning, I really felt her presence. As if we were cooking together. And the gluten-free Wheatena? While it wasn’t exactly the same, it got pretty close and absolutely hit the spot. Most importantly, making it was a reminder of all the love she always gave and how that love was always felt through her incredible cooking.
This makes enough for two servings:
Ingredients
1/2 cup quinoa or gluten-free grain mix - this would also be great with just buckwheat or millet
1 1/2 cups of milk of your choice + 1/2 cup for mixing in at the end - I used used homemade hemp milk (just blend 1 cup hemp seeds with 3 cups of water - I add a date and pinch of salt)
1 tablespoon ground flax seeds (optional)
Spices - these are optional, but I added a pinch of cinnamon and cardamom
Good pinch of salt
Toppings - I topped with toasted pumpkin seeds, toasted pecans, and a little maple syrup
How to make it
Toast grains in a small-medium saucepan for about 3 or 4 minutes, until it starts to smell toasty or grains start popping/crackling a bit
Add ground flax seed (if using) and toast another 30 seconds
Pour in 1 1/2 cups of milk and bring to a simmer. Add in your spices and the salt, reduce heat to low, cover, and let cook for about 15 minutes (depending on grains). Check in on it halfway through to make sure it’s not too dried out - you can always add more milk or water.
Mix in maple syrup/preferred sweetener + more milk depending on consistency you prefer, pour into a bowl, and top with preferred toppings.
