Whole grains. Those are the grains you are supposed to be getting three servings of a day. They are also possibly hiding out in mysterious jars in your pantry. Well, it's time to clean out the cupboard and begin again. Stop passing by the Bob's Red Mill display and grab some packages, because more help than ever is available to get you to use them. Three recent cookbooks combine accessibility with a very low earth mama quotient.

You know the whole grain trend has gone mainstream when Betty Crocker puts out a cookbook on the subject. Betty Crocker Whole Grains: Easy Everyday Recipes is a pretty good one too. There are recipes that use whole grain breakfast cereal and whole grain bread in addition to just the grains themselves. As the name suggests, these recipes have a tendency to lean toward the short and easy, this is not a cookbook for the aspiring gourmet chef. But it's actually a great choice for those times when you aren't feeling overly adventurous. Recipes like S'more Swirl Bread and Take-Along Oatmeal Bars appeal to the junk food junkie in all of us. The Best Ever Oatmeal Brown Bread could well become a staple in your baking repertoire and even if you're not a baker, recipes for quick breads like muffins and scones will con your significant other in thinking you are. All told, there are 140 recipes divided into chapters such as Better Breakfasts, Best Breads, Dinners in 30 Minutes, Slow Cooker Sides and Meals, and Delicious Desserts. A chart with cooking times, suggestions for flavor boosters and a full color photo of 20 different grains are all smart additions.

The Complete Whole Grains Cookbook: 150 Recipes for Healthy Living is a weighty tome. With 150 recipes and in-depth background material that includes nutritional and culinary profiles, general cooking times, and storage information, this book could have been subtitled, "everything you ever wanted to know about whole grains but were afraid to ask." For instance, did you know that whole grains make particularly tasty ingredients for salad? The whole grain salads in this book include such appealing offerings as Kasha and Beet Salad with Celery and Feta, Cranberry Pecan Couscous Salad, and Millet Salad with Lemony Chickpeas and Tomatoes.

The slimmest of the volumes, The New Whole Grains Cookbook: Terrific Recipes Using Farro, Quinoa, Brown Rice, Barley, and Many Others begins with descriptions and nutritional information for 17 different whole grains. Primarily a vegetarian book, there are plenty of company worthy dishes like Whole Wheat Potato Gnocchi with Truffle Oil and Mushrooms, Pecan and Wild Rice Stuffed Squash and Thai Coconut Fried Rice with Basil and Shrimp or Tofu. Over 75 recipes and 28 color photos will tempt you into trying something new and delicious. Don't be fooled by the emphasis on vegetarian entrees. The focus is on flavor too, as much or even more than health. Proving once and for all, whole grains aren't just for hippies.

I'm a bit of a skeptic when it comes to whole grains. You know the ones I mean: Amaranth. Millet. Quinoa. Teff. They sound faintly exotic, like semiprecious jewels or new colors from the Pottery Barn paint collection. But they also have a hippie-dippy air about them, and I like my food full of flavor (and my underarms shaved, thank-you-very-much).

With superstar bloggers like Heidi Swanson constantly singing their praises, though, lately I've started to waver. But something held me back. And then I went out and ate nine desserts in one sitting -- a feast so ridiculous even Dionysus himself would have surely chided me for it -- and I began looking about for ways to eat healthier. As luck would have it, The Wheat-Free Cook (William Morrow, $24.95) arrived in my mailbox during this moment of curiosity, and the first recipe to catch my eye was quinoa salad with cucumber, tomato, and mint.

Since that sounded like a dish for a warm, sunny day, I decided to call up the book's author while I waited for such a day to appear on San Francisco's foggy horizon. Jacqueline Mallorca is a local food writer who started her career by writing the first ever Williams-Sonoma catalog and later became an editorial assistant to James Beard and a San Francisco Chronicle food columnist. She now has more than 11 cookbooks to her name.

A little over ten years ago, Jackie was diagnosed with celiac disease. For Jackie and 1.5 million Americans, that means gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley, and rye, makes them sick. Like most newly diagnosed sufferers, she was taken aback by all the foods she could suddenly no longer eat -- bread, pancakes, crackers, cereal.

"Being a cook, a foodie from way back, I laughed heartily at the diet sheet I was handed, and said, 'Oh no, I can do better than that.' I started reinventing the way that I cook," Jackie told me over the phone.

That meant shifting to nut flours for cakes and cookies, rice flour for things like pasta or bread, and the aforementioned hippie-dippy grains I've been suspiciously eyeing for years. After spending a decade cooking gluten-free, she collected some of her favorite recipes in The Wheat-Free Cook.

Even though I can eat gluten, flipping through those recipes made my tummy rumble. They looked simple and sounded delicious: onion-Gruyere tart, Asian stick noodles with pork and asparagus, cornmeal and cheese shortbread.

Jackie says that her restrictions have actually made her cooking better. "A lot of the time, particularly if I'm making cookies and little petit fours and cakes with nut flours, they turn out much more delicious than the original versions because you're using such fine ingredients. Cakes made with ground almonds and the best quality [cocoa] powder and three or four eggs taste wonderful because they taste of the almonds and the good stuff," she reported.

I wanted to know more about all the funky grains that peppered the book, so I asked her what she couldn't do without, even if she could eat gluten again. "I'd never stop using quinoa because it cooks up very fluffy, and it makes the best grain salad because it doesn't go hard like rice does when it's chilled. I wouldn't give up on millet because it makes a really terrific pilaf. I wouldn't give up on teff flour because it makes the best brownies under the sun," she readily answered. "I find it's like cooking in color instead of cooking in black and white."

The sheer poetry of her answer inspired me to dig deeper into the cookbook. I went out and bought white rice flour to use for dredging sautéed foods in based on Jackie's observation that it's less gummy than flour. I dog-eared a recipe for peanut butter-chocolate chip cookies and another one for chocolate-hazelnut truffle cake (healthy eating having been long forgotten at this point). And yes, I bought some red quinoa.

A sunny day finally appeared, and I set to making the salad. I tossed in a bit of roasted chicken to make it a meal, subbed some spicy cayenne pepper for fresh ground black, and let it sit in the fridge so the flavors could introduce themselves. "Hiya," I imagined the cucumber saying. "How fresh!" would be the radish's sharp reply. But the quinoa just sat there, still and gentle, subtly flavorful, and down-to-earth. Yum.

Quinoa Salad with Cucumber, Tomato, and Mint
Serves 4-6

Recipe adapted and reprinted with permission from The Wheat-Free Cook by Jacqueline Mallorca, William Morrow, $24.95.

2 cups gluten-free vegetable broth
1 cup red or yellow quinoa, rinsed and drained
1 cup shredded roasted chicken
1 cucumber (about 8 ounces), peeled, seeded, and chopped
2 large, ripe tomatoes, finely chopped, preferably heirloom
4 green onions, thinly sliced
8 radishes, finely chopped
¼ cup chopped mint
½ cup chopped parsley
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
Fine sea salt and cayenne pepper

1. Bring the broth to a boil over high heat. Add the quinoa, reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer until the grains are tender and the liquid is absorbed, about 15 minutes. The grains will turn transparent, and the white germ ring will show. Transfer to a large bowl and let cool.

2. Add the chicken, cucumber, tomatoes, green onions, radishes, mint, and parsley. Whisk together the olive oil and vinegar, and season to taste with salt and cayenne pepper. Pour over the quinoa and vegetables, and mix gently but thoroughly. Taste for seasoning and adjust as needed. Serve at room temperature.

I've never been a big fan of oatmeal, or any hot mushy cereal. Yik. But a few years ago, I discovered steel-cut oats, which are also known as coarse-cut oats, Irish oats, Scotch oats, and pinhead oats (I like that name the best). Steel-cut oats are chopped oat groats, which only have the outer hull removed, so they are more nutritious than the more popular rolled oats. They are also nuttier, more flavorful, and retain a chewy texture. Like most whole grains, however, they take a while to cook, so you have to plan ahead. Most upscale supermarkets carry steel-cut oats, and Bob's Red Mill makes a superior packaged product. If you can find them, it's a good idea to purchase these in bulk as they tend to be fresher.

These are perfect for a rainy, chilly winter weekend morning when you are lounging around reading the paper and have 45 minutes to kill. I like my oatmeal with fruit, preferably seasonal, and since I typically eat this in the winter, I often make it with sauteed apples. A drizzle of pure maple syrup is also delicious.

Steel-Cut Oats with Apples

Serves 4

Ingredients:

For the oats:
3 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup steel-cut oats
1/2 teaspoon salt

For the apples:
2-3 medium apples, peeled and cored
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
Pinch of cinnamon

Preparation:

To make the oats, in a large saucepan, bring the water and milk to a slow boil. Meanwhile, melt the 2 tablespoons butter in a frying pan and add the oats. Toast the oats for about 15 minutes, until golden and toasty. Add the oats and the salt to the boiling water, and cook, stirring occasionally, until thick and creamy (but not mushy), about 30-40 minutes.

Meanwhile, to make the apples, cut the apples into medium chunks. Melt the butter in a frying pan, then add the apples, sugar, and cinnamon. Cook, stirring occasionally, until crisp-tender and caramelized, about 15 minutes.

Serve the oatmeal topped with the apples. MMMMMmmmmmm.