Maybe your experience with whole grains is like mine: For years I wanted to include more of them in my family’s diet. I would try them, one after another — quinoa, wheat berries, farro, spelt — a meal with each, and the remainder of the uncooked grain would sit in the pantry for months, and then we’d feed it to the chicks. I liked some of them well enough. But not well enough to make them again and again.

I’ve been wondering when a whole-grains cookbook would make a thorough convert of me, my husband, and even our young children. So when “Grain Mains,” by veteran cookbook team Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough, came along, I set out to discover if they had, in fact, successfully supplied that need.