Bite Sized Lentil Snacks

I've been looking for some creative vegetarian options lately. Mostly because we're running low on our organic meat supply and are due for a trip to the farm. It's also healthy and easy and cheap. I was searching for lentil recipes, since I've fallen out of the habit of soaking beans, and lentils don't need to be pre-soaked. I came across a recipe at Just Bento that I modified to include what I had on hand (sweet potatoes and peas). I served them as part of a "make believe" dinner (which means a whole bunch of stuff thrown together). I liked to dip my lentil bites into guacamole, my daughter dipped hers in ranch dressing, and my husband used his like falafel in a pita with lettuce and tomato. My son, however, didn't like them. No surprises there.
I brought the leftovers for my lunch for a couple of days and if nothing else, they were WAY yummier than anything the cafeteria serves up. I do highly recommend some sort of dip or else they can be a bit dry.

Snacker alert--they are great to have in the fridge and just pop one if you're feeling snacky for something savory and want to avoid the temptation of junkier items.

Lentil Bites
2 cups uncooked red lentils
1/2 cup cooked brown rice
1 big onion or 2 small, chopped into teeny pieces
2-3 garlic cloves, chopped
1/4 cup olive oil (or coconut oil works too)
1 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. ground coriander
1 tsp. curry powder
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (optional)
1-2 tbsp tamari, soy sauce or Bragg's liquid
Salt and pepper
Sesame seeds or flax seeds (or a combination of both)
Optional additions - 1 small sweet potato (diced - I pre-cooked for a minute in the microwave), 1/2 c green peas, 1/2 c cauliflower (chopped into tiny pieces), pretty much anything goes here.

Rinse the lentils, and cook them (put them in a pot and cover them with about an extra inch of water). Cook for 15-20 mins. Skim the goo off the top. Drain off any excess water.

In the meantime, put the chopped onions, garlic, spices and olive oil in a frying pan with any of the optional added veggies. Fry until the onions are softened. Add the brown rice and tamari or soy sauce.

Mix everything together. If you're not deterred by the sloppy look (see above), you can just eat it right now. Or, if you're in the mood for something more tidy looking, let it cool. Once cool, scoop it out on a baking tray lined with parchment paper into golf ball sized dollops. You can flatten them or roll them or just leave them alone. Sprinkle with sesame seeds or flax seeds. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes or until the surface is a bit crispy.

Eat, freeze, or refrigerate, whatever works.

Inspiration

I began this blog last year around this time. I managed 9 months of regular (OK, sporadic) blogging. Eventually I ran out of words. And out of interest I guess. But a few things have happened in the last few weeks that have got me typing again:
1) My seed catalogues arrived. As I browsed the "Thai Pink Egg" tomatoes, the "Bull's Blood" beets, and the "Tennis Ball" lettuce, I couldn't help but get excited at the prospect of starting the garden experiment all over again.
2) The world issues class I teach has begun it's exploration of the global food system. It's always a shocking unit for my students, particularly for the bright ones who have learned alot about digestion, enzymes and the Canada Food Guide, but not much about the political and social side of food. The best part of teaching is always to "see the lightbulb turn on" and we're just about at that point where I'm going to see alot of shining light! It's put me in wordy state of mind.
3) Our family started working with Lauren from GingerRoots Nutrition. Her blog has heaps of great recipe ideas and she is so full of energy and enthusiasm about food (and pretty much everything else) that it was contagious. We've had the good luck of sampling her lentil muffins, spicy salsa soup, coconut squash soup and a few other items. YUM.

Today I decided to try actually cooking Lauren's Spicy Salsa Soup recipe (it's a black bean soup with carrots, red pepper and onion) to see if it really was as easy-peasy as she claimed. Indeed it is - and only has to cook for 5-ish minutes! Now, it's not a pretty soup, it's brown...but with shake of salt on top, it was a major hit with my five year old. Who knew?

Sauce Rage

A few weeks ago, I made salsa and tomato sauce. I did it late at night after my kids were in bed. Some evenings I started this ridiculous endeavour at 9:30 pm only to collape exhausted into bed at 1 am. Let me explain that I am on summer holidays and my husband is not. His alarm goes off at 6am and I have learned to sleep right through it. So when I got it in my head to start a canning binge on a Sunday night, my husband, while supportive in theory, was not particularly enthusiastic. So I did it myself.

The first day was fine. I made a test batch of tomato sauce. No problem. But that didn't even make a tiny dent in the massive pile of tomatoes in my kitchen. So I got to work on salsa, diced tomatoes, roasted tomatoes. Over the course of the week (one that also included taking the kids swimming, to the zoo, the beach, the library, and making 3 meals a day), the nighttime canning experiment began to get ugly. I began to vent in my head, I started to bang pots and pans around, I took to angrily elbowing my snoring husband when I crawled into bed late at night. I recall at one point being reduced to screeching something to the effect of "I'll remember that this is NOT YOUR FOOD and won't serve you ANY! Jackass!" when he made a comment about the mess in the kitchen not being his idea. Or something like that.

Turns out, I was suffering from Sauce Rage. Seems it stems from anger at the futility of spending countless hours to make something that you don't really need to make. And, for me, from some deeply instilled feminist voices in the back of my head.

After my first week of canning was done, and my mountain of tomatoes reduced to a mere molehill, I was able to think again. I was able to use real words to express what had been eating at me. And that was, "6 years of university and two degrees and here I am toiling for hours over a hot stove to make food for us that I could just buy at the store with the money I can earn in less than an hour of work?" Indeed, in all this waxing poetic about the joys of the "old ways", there is certainly a tense undercurrent of "there is a reason women wanted out of the kitchen". I still can't quite wrap my head around the gender politics of this endeavour, but I certainly found some food for thought (sorry) in an article by Peggy Orenstein, The Femivore's Dilemma. Despite the unfortunate title (femivore=one who eats women?), I found the article both inspiring and cautionary. It made me glad that I said " Next time, let's do this together so I don't feel like a harried hausfrau" and we agreed to use weekends instead of evenings. My next batch involved spousal assistance in peeling, seeding and chopping. It was kind of fun, and overall left me blissfully free of the dreaded Sauce Rage. Moral of the story, don't sauce alone. You'll want to kill someone.

Health Food?

Aha! I was right. I love those words.
My husband has been nagging me to break the kids' maple syrup habit. Too much sugar. But you know that our mornings are rarely complete without syrup. Get a load of this, maple syrup may be the new blueberry. As reported in today's Toronto Star, a study (granted, it's just preliminary, but I only hear what I want to hear) suggests that maple syrup has antibacterial, anti-cancer and anti-diabetic properties. They have lignans (the good stuff in flax) and phenolic acids (the good stuff in berries and coffee).
To celebrate the good news, I'm marinating a (hormone free) pork loin in sesame oil, tamari, garlic, and maple syrup. Bring it on!

Food Inc. Fallout

Movie night madness again. We watched Food Inc. on Sunday. Then we purged our cupboards. We packed up almost everything that was packaged, prepared, or otherwise processed. Our cupboards look so neat and tidy now, though much less colourful. Now it's mostly nuts, beans, seeds, grains and other varying shades of beige and brown. So very granola of us. It makes me feel a bit extreme, but then I just ask myself, would my great-grandmother even recognize these purged items as food? She managed to feed 11 children every day without Fruit Roll-Ups and Lipton Sidekicks. I only have 2 kids to feed, surely I can do this and stay moderately sane, right?

If you're tempted to think that I've always been a processed food hater, think again. I love it. I can't resist it. But I want my kids to know real food. I want them to like it, and I want them to know how to cook it. How else to do this except rid my kitchen of temptation?

I had two successful days, then I got the stomach flu. Who feels like a well planned week of spinach, sprouts, and lentils when your stomach is a raging animal? So I dragged myself and the kids to the store and bought a supersize box of popsicles instead. Partly to keep them quiet so I could curl up in the fetal position, and partly so I could eat my favourite flu food. There is an exception to every rule. And to be honest, our current exceptions include: ketchup, pasta sauce, pasta, maple syrup, waffles, pancake mix, rice cakes, raisins, bread, mayo, dark chocolate, bbq sauce, and, and for bribery, jellybeans.

Tomorrow we'll get back on track with baked falafel made from actual chickpeas and fresh herbs, and homemade tzatziki. Yum.

A Sprout of Fancy

My next step is pretty exciting for me. I've always been head over heels with the idea of growing food, but the sad truth of the matter is that I have a very dark black thumb. All my houseplants are cacti, since they're the only ones I haven't succeeded in neglecting to death. So the concept of growing food that doesn't require soil, weeding, watering, etc, is very appealing. Starting today, I'm growing my own "crunchy lentil sprout mix". I bought a little organic sprout starter kit with the best of intentions about a year ago. I found it in the cupboard today and thought, I can do this! You just put them in water overnight and then drain them and rinse them every day. Should be ready to eat in 3-4 days. This meets my need for instant gratification in a way that actual gardening simply can't do.
I'll let you know what happens in 3-4 days.

FoodShare

Ugly looking vegetable this celeriac. Who would have thought that you could mash it up with onion, carrot, parsley, thyme and anything else you like to make a delicious, light side dish. I wouldn't have known this had I not tasted the most delicious concoction ever made last week at FoodShare's "Recipe for Change" fundraising event. 26 chefs preparing tasting plates beyond expectations and imagination. My winner for the night was the glazed beach mushrooms with celery mash and beet/yellow pepper sauce from Calico Cafe, hubby was partial to the cornish hen and tarragon ravioli from Quince.

Thanks to FoodShare for a wonderful, well organized event, and for the great work they do all year round. If you haven't heard of it, FoodShare is a Toronto-based non-profit whose vision is "Good, Healthy Food for all". They work to connect people back to their food supply, teach kids about growing, making and eating healthy food, and get good food to vulnerable people.

The message certainly resonated with me since just that day, my 4 year old daughter wondered aloud why she always has to take a healthy snack to kindergarten while the kid who sits beside her gets to bring Smarties every day. Gives me an idea for a long term goal to work towards - implementing a kindergarten healthy snack program at the school. This might take awhile, but be patient with me, I'm still working on the small steps!

Links:
Calico Cafe -fresh, veg/vegan, near Bloor and Dufferin http://www.calicocafe.ca
Quince - Mediterranean food near Yonge and Eg http://www.quincerestaurant.ca
FoodShare - http://www.foodshare.net

Veg meal, Veg brain

I cracked my head today, hard. Since then I've been in a bit of a confused fog. I'm having trouble finding my words today. But I did the veggie thing for real today. I made the following veggie meal. It's cheap and healthy and it tastes okay (like pretty much everything, it's tastier if you add hot sauce). Best part is that it's easy enough to cook while suffering from mild concussion.

It's apparently a variation of something called "Louvia me Lehana". Not sure the origins.

3 cups dried black-eyed peas
water
2 onions, chopped
5 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup fresh dill, chopped
1 cup fresh parsley, chopped
2 fresh tomatoes, diced
2 tablespoons tomato paste
4 tablespoons olive oil
salt

Soak the peas overnight(if not using canned ones). Rinse and then boil them in a pot for 45 minutes. Drain them.
In another pot put the olive oil and the onion. Stir and cook for 2-3 minutes. Then add the garlic, the tomatoes, the tomato paste, the parsley and the dill. Let them cook in medium heat for 30 minutes. Add some salt.
Add the peas to the sauce, mix and cook in low heat for 15 minutes. Serve with pita.

Mmmmmeat?

This month I'm teaching about the economics of food and the issues of industrial agriculture. I have to put that out there so you know that I'm not just a glutton for punishment. I wouldn't have chosen "Frankensteer" as my Thursday viewing if I didn't need to preview it for work.
I eat meat. I like eating meat.

I tried vegetarianism for 4 years during university. I didn't eat meat but I didn't eat chickpeas or kidney beans or leafy greens either. I mostly ate cheese pizza. Even then, I had a real problem with Swiss Chalet chicken, the problem being I couldn't resist it. But the real breaking point of my flirtation with vegetarianism came when I met my carnivorous husband. It wasn't much of a challenge for him to break my habit. He easily wore me down by cooking bbq ribs and steak. I haven't really looked back. Until recently.

My Thursday night documentary is one you'll want to avoid. You probably already know that from its title. That is, unless you've got alot of money burning a hole in your pocket or a strong but latent urge to eat more lentils. Frankensteer is about growth hormones, antibiotics, carnivorous cows, feedlots, and feces. Having viewed it already, it's too late for me. As soon as it was done, I got onto the internet and found the shop not too far from here that sells meat from nearby Mennonite and Amish farms and immediately placed an order. No antibiotics, no hormones. No massive feedlots as far as the eye can see. You can check it out at http://freshfromthefarm.ca.

As with most of my small steps, this one is not cheap. But I've got a plan. Continue to eat meat, but only the clean stuff. And use way less of it. Tonight we had our drug free chicken souvlaki. It was delicious. We treated it like gold and couldn't afford to overeat. This week, in the interest of preventing bankruptcy, I'm going to cook meatless at least twice.
Fingers crossed that I'll get more creative than cheese pizza. Take pity on me and post your faves.

Oh, and if after all that you still want to watch the doc, you can find it at: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4129902081038592146#