Grain salads are not only delicious and filling; they also provide fiber and protein. You can eat them alone, serve them on a pile of greens, or spike them with beans, tofu, cheese, or eggs to make satisfying and complete meals.
Various cooking techniques for grains are described on pages 397 to 398, but for salads, I rely mostly on “Cooking Grains, the Easy Way” (page 398). One change is that I often rinse them after cooking to remove some of the starch and keep the grains separate. And as with beans, it’s optimal to cook the grains when you want to prepare a salad so you can dress them warm and allow them to absorb flavor as they cool. Likewise it’s better to under- than overcook to avoid mushiness.
But you and I both know that if these were all hard-and-fast rules, you wouldn’t be eating grain salads very often. The real-life approach is to plan for leftovers whenever you cook a pot of grains by doubling the recipe if necessary. That will ensure that you always have the ingredients for last-minute options at your fingertips.