Should Lentils Be More Popular?

Lentils are for lentil soup.  Curried lentils maybe.  Does anyone do anything else with lentils? They’re inexpensive, incredibly filling, can be flavored by what you’re cooking with.

Last night I made a “cleaning out the fridge” dinner – in part because we’re going away for the holidays, and as an attempt to use up any forgotten produce before our weekly groceries were delivered. [* shout out to the folks at Peapod who allow food to appear at my door every Wednesday night around 7pm]

Part of this plan of attack was to use up a bag of lentils I had bought a week or so ago for a sausage/kale/lentil soup.  After Mister’s comment that I’d been cooking an interestingly high number of soups in the past few weeks, I didn’t think it would go over well and it never happened.  That meant I still had this bag of lentils, and I wasn’t about to let them just hang out in the pantry with the 4 boxes of pasta I’ll politely ignore for a few more months as well.

There was no recipe, only the prayer that an edible meal would result at some point that night.

1. 1 cup lentils, 2 cups water.  Simmered in a pot with whole smashed garlic cloves, salt, pepper, cumin, allspice
2. sweet Italian sausage in a large saute pan with olive oil
3. once the sausage was blackened  crisped up bit, added veggies and garlic

veggies:

• red pepper
• yellow pepper
• onion
• mushrooms
• peas

At this point, Mister was out of the house to grab some supplies for his kitchen renovation project.  Which meant that dinner was ready and he wasn’t home to eat it.  I turned the burners off and let everything sit for 20ish minutes until he was home.  At this point, I warmed them back up -plated and ate.

 

On the side, some Olde York Farm Cacao & Maple Vodka mixed with some apple cider.  Just a splash of their vodka gives the cider a complex, mulled flavor that I’m completely hooked on.

Here’s the thing about those lentils; they were already pretty mushy when it came to pack up the leftovers. And I wasn’t left feeling like, “man, we should eat way more lentils.” But, about two hours and one dog walk later, I was still uncomfortably full from about a quarter of a cup of lentils.  That’s impressive stuff.

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