Banish beriberi. . .and maybe leg cramps too

"Beriberi" used to be a joke with me because I didn't know what it was. I thought, from the sound of the name, that it was some kind of tropical ailment that could only be caught on a desert island with a palm tree in the middle. But actually beriberi is a condition that weakens people due to a lack of thiamine, Vitamin B-1. 

 

Happily, buckwheat has significant amounts of Vttamin B1. Soba noodles add thiamine to the Japanese diet, filling in the gap left by white rice, which is deficient in the vitamin. A delicious bowl of soba noodles now and then = no beriberi.

Buckwheat's not the only food which has thiamine in it, of course, but its' so easy to add a cup of buckwheat flour when, say, making pancankes from ready-made mix, as I did this morning. I'm one of those people who occasionally gets leg cramps at night, and some of the B vitamins, including B1, can hrlp prevent neuromuscular misfires which can lead to tingling and/or cramping in the feet or legs.

Buckwheat pizza crusts

We have a new pizza pan at our house so we were talking about making homemade crust. That got me wondering if there was such a thing as buckwehat pizza crust. And there is! Thank you, Internet. 

One option is to make a gluten-free crust, avoiding wheat altogther. The result is thin and crispy and it looks delicious.

 

I personally can tolerate gluten and I like a thicker crust under my pizza toppings, so I looked for options where I could add buckwheat flour to wheat flour.  Turns out it helps to look for "whole grain" recipes which include buckwheat. Otherwise all the searches gave me only gluten-free options. 

I think I'm going to try this one today because it looks pretty darn good. 

Buckwheat popcorn

I have not tried popping buckwheat seeds like popcorn but apparently it's A Thing. I'll have to try it over the winter when I have fewer garden chores and fewer opprotunities to go look at the ocean.

Charming young cook demonstrates how to make buckwheat pocorn

Buckwheat flowers

One of my favorite things to do is to look for shareable / copyright-free / fair-use imagery of buckwheat. If there's a link to a blog or website I try to include that here on the blog. This pretty image is from the Creative Commons option list. Don't have any info on the photographer. The image is titled "Japanese buckwheat flower."

Gluten-free buckwheat flour

Buckwheat, since it is a seed rather than a grain, makes a nice gluten-free flour. I find that its texture is closer to wheat flour than some of the other alternative flours, like sorghum flour or rice flour. 

Google searches, Eddie Murphy, and racism

Many, if not most, nternet searches for 'buckwheat" are done by people who aren't looking for the food product, crop, or source of pillow filling hulls. Very common searches are about the character Buckwheat from the vintage comedy shorts featuring "The Little Rascals," and/or the version of Buckwheat played by Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live. 

I've put together a page about the child actor who played Buckwheat on "The Little Rascals," but today's post is about why the character continues to trouble anyone with any kind of cultural sensitivity. 

For me, it's about the hair. 

 

I bought these bargain DVDs because the illustrations tell the story. We're supposed to think that both Buckwheat and Alfalfa have equally funny hair. Alfalfa's hair is funny because he parts it in the middle, and there's a stalk of hay-like hair sticking up at the back. But Buckwheat's hair is supposed to be funny because the stereotype of African-American people is that they are afraid of ghosts, etc. and that's why Buckwheat's hair stands comically on end. Not the same kind of joke, right?

Some days it's not very comfortable when people ask what I do and I list blogging about Buckwheat and their minds immediately go to the character in "The Little Rascals." But whatcha gonna do?

 

 

Frozen buckwheat waffles

I asked my daughter, who conveniently enjoys foods with buckwheat flour in them, to try these "Nature's Path" Wildberry buckwheat waffles. She liked them so I tried one myself this morning.

They are a little sweeter than I expected before i read the ingredients list, but I think they'd be a good way to help get family members to accept buckwheat in the daily diet. Some people find buckwheat's characteristic tang flavor a little sour or bitter, thought it's a quality I really like. And most people find that the healthy fiber in buckwheat is easier to adjust to if the buckwheat flour is mixed with another flour (in these waffles, the manufacturers use rice flour).

Buckwheat pita bread recipe with simple ingredients

Most of us associate buckwheat flour with pancakes, but it makes many kinds of foods, including savory ones like pita bread. 

Click here to watch a YouTube tutorial on making buckwheat pita.