Quinoa

again, from A Life of Balance...

Called the Mother Grain by the Incas, quinoa was first harvested more than three thousand years ago in South America.  After the Spanish conquest, the Incas began to harvest European grains and ceased to use their native quinoa for more than four centuries.  Quinoa is a distant relative to the beet, spinach, and swiss chard family.  In fact, the leaves of the quinoa plant are cooked and used like spinach.

Like buckwheat, quinoa is technically the fruit of a plant from the Chenopodiaceae family.  While quinoa comes in an array of colors - pink, orange, and red - the variety available in the United States is a buff color.  The resurgence of this stoic grain affords us many vital nutrients.  Quinoa, similar in composition to milk, is the only grain that contains the eight essential amino acids (proteins) in perfect proportion.  Some of these eight amino acids, such as lysine, methionine, and cystine, are scarce in most plant sources.  Quinoa is sweet, astringent, and pungent, with a heating energy.  And excellent grain for Vata and Kapha types, it may also be used occasionally in the fall and winter by Pitta types.