Kasha

They loved it. Irony is best served with butter, onions, and sour cream, apparently.

Kasha.  Maybe I’ll name my daughter Kasha.  Why not?  Legend has it a lady named her kid Chlamydia.  It does have a nice ring to it.

Don’t worry, I won’t.  Maybe a dog though.

As a kid kasha with bowties was the culinary bane of my family get-togethers.  The flavor was just too strong and too rustic.  It is rich and dark in flavor, assertive, earthy, and unlike any other grain.  Kasha, roasted buckwheat groats, were a staple of the poor peoples of Eastern Europe and Russia and I felt that eating them in modern day America was an exercise in gustatory nostalgia.  Kasha I figured, was something the older generation ate to remind themselves of that which they no longer had to eat.  Like camping.  The greatest dinnertime apocalypse was, and hands down the most difficult meal in the western world for a juvenile palate is: kasha and chicken livers.  And I liked chicken livers.

But I’ve discovered some things about kasha. 1) It is, of course, nutritionally sound. 2) Buckwheat is a boon plant for serious gardeners and pollinators of all kinds. 3) I like rich, strong flavored foods like coffee, chocolate, and marrow. 4) Kasha is better with lots of onions. 5) Kasha is better with lots of fat (shocker, I know). 6) Most of the kasha I was served was way, way overcooked – kasha is delicate. 7) I like the nostalgia kasha brings to me.

So, be open to something new yet strong.  Don’t be shy about heating it in lots of butter, or schmaltz if you have it, G-d bless you; and top it with yogurt or sour cream.  And, be glad it’s not what you also had for breakfast and lunch today with a similar forecast for tomorrow.