Tag Archives: red lentils

spaghettilentil0

I may have fallen behind on my posts. I think I will be short one post in the end, which is fine since I didn’t like some of the later prompts. See on Friday I got a call from my Father in law. Turns out he had tickets to go see Houndmouth in New York City. But his wife was sick and couldn’t go. He would of asked Jon but he knew that he was swamped with work. So I figured why the hell not? Surely seeing a concert is much more important than staying at home working on a blog post, which I think most MOFOers would agree. So I went and had fun.

The band was great, though I wasn’t a huge fan of the crowd. I’ve been to a bunch of concerts including D’espairs Ray and Gwar, and I have NEVER seen so much drinking. Like I was on the balcony looking down thinking “I see a lot of beer cans, does this always happen and I just don’t have a birds eye view?” Then while leaving there was just tons of beer soaking on the ground from people dancing with their beer cans. NEVER had that happen before. Well, I guess it could of happened at Gwar, but then got covered by mystery liquids. But it wasn’t like the crowd is obnoxious drunk, they were pretty enthusiastic. I just tend to not like when the crowd is more enthusiast than me about music, probably. Oh and the pot. So much pot being smoked. ANYWAYS…. moving to the prompt…

spaghettilentil1

I am snowed in and can’t leave the house! What will you do?! I had to think hard about how to interpret this prompt. See I am a pretty good planner. My mother worked weird hours, so she would make a habit of picking out meals for each day of the week, then shopping for all the meals. So if it snowed hard, I would continue to just make what I was planning for dinner. So then I tried to dig deeper into the prompt, what would prevent me from making a dinner? Power outage! I have a gas stove so I could still cook, just couldn’t open the fridge really. So this dish uses all shelf stable ingredients- or fresh… okay technically I used homemade stock, but store bought stock works fine! I also used fresh tomatoes, but canned crushed tomatoes work great too.

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So pretty much the only “fresh” ingredients would the spaghetti squash itself and onion/garlic that is chopped up. I think most seasoned cooks always buy bags of onions and has a bunch of garlic on hand. Spaghetti squash not so much. I am not a big fan of spaghetti squash, but I always get some from the farm. I am always trying to expand my palette so I always force myself to eat the squash that is given to me. It isn’t like I don’t like the taste, it is just such a weird texture that I never know what to do with it. Then I saw online that a spaghetti squash could be used in a soup. I thought this would be more interesting than just subbing pasta for squash, like most recipes. 

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The end result was a thick stew. The red lentils are super cooked, and perhaps slightly “dal-ish.” I loved how the spaghetti squash sort of holds all the parts of the soup together. The active time is pretty low, and there is lots of downtime. But I think this would be a great soup for a snowy day. 

Oh and you know how I mentioned how I don’t really like spaghetti squash? Well almost every year I grab the squash, then somehow get my in-laws squash from their CSA share. So the squash last even LONGER! It kind-of gets pushed aside because it lasts longer than say, ripe tomatoes. So by the time I made this soup, the seeds in the squash started to sprout! It was pretty crazy! At first I thought that here was a worm in my squash, nope just the sprout.

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kimchipenne0

I am officially pooped today. My work is located in a housing development, which is weird since it is zoned as commercial. Well, the development has a yearly yard sale, and my boss decided to unload all his family inherited stuff. So I went to work an hour early and just spent the days… doing something… I just couldn’t tell you. Oh wait, I remember listen to sexists jerk make comments about those “poor women” who had to use the old irons as they were so heavy that they wouldn’t have energy to make dinner for their men. No. fucking. joke.

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Needless to say all my mental energy was used on making sure I didn’t clobber the guy, and now I am ready for a nap. Which this meal would be a perfect dish to make on day like this. A lot of these ingredients I always have on hand, though I can see why people wouldn’t always have kimchi in their fridge. I am always trying to think of ways incorporate kimchi into meals. Most kimchi, pickles, and relishes are great for cooking, but sometimes can be hard to actually find recipes. I am always trying to find ways to save my produce during the summer, and brine-pickling is a easy way to do it.

Other cool things about the recipe? You can pretty much use any type of kimchi, even sauerkraut would be a great substitute. I personally mixed my kolhrabi kimchi and traditional nappa cabbage kimchi together for the recipe. But you can get a little crazy, try out a beet kimchi or daikon radish kimchi, I am drooling just thinking about it.

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Like I mentioned it is fast to put together. There are two plans of tackling the dish, one to make the least amount of dishes, or the other is to make it as fast as possible. If you get two pots going, you can have everything done in 30 minutes, easy. Just boil the pasta in one pot, then make the lentils in another, then toss. But if you are like me, you can boil your pasta, drain, then use that pot to make the lentils. It might make the dish take 45-50 minutes, but you get lots of down time to get some things ready or make other sides.

Another time saving trick is to use small red lentils. They cook up in 10 minutes, but if you use larger brown lentils, you’ll have to add more water and cook for longer, which is fine if you have the time. Just don’t skip over the lentils, the added protein makes the dish, and they really work well with the kimchi.

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sloppyjoe1

Oh man! I am so excited to be back! Our host had too many sites on their server, which is why our page was taking so long to load. So for one week the site was locked, and we couldn’t make any changes, but it was still viewable. Then we had to spend another week with the site being 100% down. It was awful and I was itching all week to work on the site. 

But now the site is back up, and everyone can see our new link buttons on the side, and our big ass blog directory! But first let me share this super easy recipe.

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This recipe I’ve been holding on to for awhile now. It just seemed a little boring. I mean sloppy joes? With lentils? I mean don’t all vegans know about this? Surely?! Well, I gave some leftovers to my husband for work and everyone at his work commented on how clever it was. Sometimes when you are drenched in a subculture, you forget what is or isn’t common.

So even though this dish isn’t something uncommon with vegan blogs, I think it can still reach others to give inspiration. The recipe is also really non-vegan friendly- meaning if you are a non-vegan and you making something for your vegan guests, this is a great option. Quinoa and lentils are pretty frequently used in recipes, and the only “hard” work is reading the buns ingredients to make sure there aren’t any eggs or milk in them (which milk is often added to pre-made breads!) I used sprouted buns, but they taste best with the cheap fluffy white buns.

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alpha1

This recipe is in heavy rotation in this house. It might take awhile to chop everything up in small pieces, but I always seem to have the ingredients around. In fact I always make sure I have a large can of crushed tomatoes in the cabinet, and alphabet pasta just incase. I always start with a carrot, a stalk of celery, and onion, then work with what veggies I have in the fridge. Did I use half of a turnip? I’ll chop it up. Broccoli stalks? I’ll chop it up.

The recipe started from How It All Vegan from their “kids” section. I made alterations to the recipe, and tweaked it so many times that I can’t even remember fully what the whole recipe was. I have the entire recipe memorized, which made writing down the recipe a little daunting. I always just add as much stock as I need, usually dependent on how much veggies I chop.

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