Red Lentil and Quinoa Stew

This was so good that when I tasted it to adjust the seasoning at the end, I uttered something that was both really profane and really, really obscene. For the sake of people's sensibilities, I won't repeat it here.

Once again, I am at the scraping the pantry stage of the grocery cycle where I challenge myself to create delicious dishes with just what I have on hand, forcing myself to make substitutions as needed. Since I am eating vegan again, this brings along an additional layer of complexity as I may try to veganize old recipes.

At the moment, I have very few vegetarian/vegan specialty items like tempeh or seitan, but one thing I do have in abundance is a whole mess of dried legumes. I am silly with them, in fact, from black-eyed peas, to black beans and great northern beans to a variety of split peas and lentils. I made my wonderfully spicy lentil soup yesterday with those earthy brown lentils, and today decided that I needed more spice and more lentils, so I adapted my take on red lentil dhal and created a red lentil and quinoa stew.

After I had devoured my bowl of the stew, my 7 year-old daughter came over and sniffed the bowl cautiously before asking me, "Is this some kind of soup, Mommy?" I told her that it was, and that it was yummy, and she asked for some, saying, "It looks like a carrot soup," "Yes," I said, "There is some carrot in there," and ladled out a bit for her to try.

"YUM!" She said, giving me a thumbs-up.

Sometimes Mommy just flat-out rocks the house and gets it right. ☺


Edit: The kid scarfed down two bowls of this stew. That's right, TWO.

Red Lentil and Quinoa Stew

Ingredients:

• 1 stalk celery, diced finely
• 1 medium onion, diced finely
• 1/2 red bell pepper, diced finely
• 1/2 cup of grated carrot
• 1 large clove garlic, chopped (about 2 T)
• 1/4 cup diced tomato
  
• 3/4 cup red lentils
• 1/2 cup quinoa
  
• 5 cups water or broth
  
• 1 T tomato paste
• onion powder
• garlic powder
• chili powder
• coriander
  
• cumin
• turmeric
  
• 1 bay leaf
• hot sauce
  

Directions:

1. Heat 2 T olive oil in a saucepan over medium-high heat.
   
2. Add the chopped onion and celery and saute for 2 minutes.
   
3. Add the bell pepper, carrots and garlic, stirring well.
   
4. After 5 minutes or so, when the vegetables have softened significantly, add the tomato and stir well.
   
5. Add the spices and let cook for a minute.
6. Add the red lentils and quinoa, turn the heat to high and add the water and the tomato paste.
   
7. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low, keep covered and let simmer for 30 minutes.
   
8. Taste and adjust seasoning. Here's where I add the hot sauce.
   
9. Simmer uncovered another 15 minutes until the lentils are no longer crunchy. Fish out the bay leaf.
   
10. Serve, adding more hot sauce as your palate dictates. Today, my palate commanded a heavy hand with the Cholula.
    

Notes:

• I used half red quinoa and half white quinoa (1/4 cup each), but it would be delicious with either one of those or black quinoa if you can find it.
  
• I could not find my coriander powder in the horror show that is my spice cabinet, but I did have a jar of coriander seeds, so I broke out my handy mortar and pestle and crushed them up.
  
  If you decide to do this, be sure to crush the seeds very thoroughly so you don't have to bite down on the sharp husks of the coriander seeds. Although I use whole coriander in some Indian dishes, those sauces tend to simmer for a very long time, softening the seeds. If this is too much work for you, then make sure that your coriander powder is easily accessible.
  
• I was purposely vague about the seasoning amounts today because, well, I didn't even measure anything out, I just "salted" everything, although I can tell you that I used about 1/2 teaspoon of coriander seeds and about the same amount of ground cumin, and only 1 bay leaf.
• Speaking of salt, as you can see, I used none in this recipe, though you are certainly free to S&P this dish to your liking.
  
• If you are itching to garnish this with something, I'd go with chopped cilantro. I realized way after the fact that I have a bunch of cilantro languishing in the crisper of my fridge. Sometimes I think that the crisper is where veggies go to die. Things get lost in there. Tsk.
  

• Hot sauce - After years of being a Frank's aficionado, lately I have been reaching for Cholula, but have been meaning to try some of the hot sauces made by the folks of our own Dinosaur BBQ right here in Syracuse.
  
  They have Devil's Duo Pepper Sauce and a Garlic Chipotle Pepper Sauce. If those sauces are near as good as their barbecue slathering sauces and rubs, I predict that they'll be out of this world.
  
  Click the picture to go to the site.
  

Day 46: Strong Hearts Cafe

Well, as I predicted yesterday, I could barely wait until 11 am to try out the vegan cafe in my city. I dragged the girls off with me for a vegan luncheon. I promised them pizza, only to discover that I had not read the menu very well. They serve pizza on Friday nights from 6pm until 2 am only. Oops. That elicited a bit of sulkiness from my Tween-in-training, but I snagged a few menus and pointed out to her that they served breakfast all day and emphasized the long list of milkshakes and she was ok.

In the end, Natalie had waffles topped with powdered sugar, fresh strawberries and real maple syrup and washed it down with a huge pumpkin milkshake. That milkshake tasted like a Thanksgiving pumpkin pie, oh my! Lucy opted for a BLT using the fak'n bacon stuff, vegan cheese (Teese), vegannaise, lettuce and tomato on grilled whole wheat bread, and to drink, had a thick, creamy blueberry milkshake. I had a TLT: a generous slab of marinated, baked tofu with tomato, lettuce, sprouts, pesto & vegannaise on grilled whole wheat bread. Although the milkshakes were tempting, I had a yerba mate after finding out that they'd sold out of my first choice Thai Iced Tea.


The verdict: Delicious. The girls loved their food too, and any mom, vegan or otherwise, can tell you, that's no mean feat.


The sandwiches came solo, unaccompanied by chips, fries or even a small salad, so the prices were a bit, well, pricey for simple sandwiches, but I'm ok with it, and let me tell you why. This place is 100% vegan, and it's rare that a restaurant offers any vegetarian items at all, let alone any vegan offerings. I'm more than happy to support them. Sure, I won't be eating there every week, but I don't eat out anywhere every week, but when I do go out, I will be going there instead of spending my money elsewhere.

I am happy to spread the love; in fact, I told my sister-in-law about the place today. She hadn't heard about it either. They've been open for a little over a year now, and are going strong. I hope that they continue to do well. We could use more places like this.

Day 41: Refreshed

For the past 8 years ever since my son's death, a good portion of the month of June is hard for me. I often disappear from the radar, I'll stop blogging, avoid my usual internet haunts, hole up at home, reading books, watching movies, and quite often, just go to bed.

This past week I did not eat healthily; I ate completely vegan, but I basically ate nothing but bread. I took in no fruit at all, and very few vegetables. I took refuge in homemade naan and whole wheat flatbread. I craved Korean and Indian food for some reason, and made aloo gobhi and kimchi fried rice. Kimchee fried rice was one of my comfort foods when I was teaching in Korea: cheap, easy to make, and very filling, it satisfies.

This morning, though, I feel as though I've finally woken up. The girls have been begging me to take them to see the movie "Up," so we're off to the movies in a little while. They also asked for Chinese food, but I told them that a trip to the movies and take out was too much for one day, but said that we could do our DIY takeout, and they liked that.

So, later on, we'll be making mandu, veganized, 0f course. I'm planning on two kinds: the fake ground beef sort adapted from my original meat-based recipe here (I'll use the Gimme Lean fake ground beef), and veggie mandu filled with baby bok choy, tofu, shiitake mushroom, green onion, soy sauce, garlic and ginger.

I have some nice asparagus that I'll roast, glazed with soy sauce and sprinkled with sesame seeds, and I still have some leftover sticky rice that could heat up as an accompaniment. Presto! DIY takeout Chinese night. It keeps the girls happy, and as the three of us sit together at the dining room table making the mandu, we do silly things like sing songs and tell stories. Then we'll eat pic-nic style in the living room while we watch some dvd.

The girls' gradual introduction to vegan replacements for old standards has gone very well. They are actively taking an interest in what I eating and are willing to try things out. They have found that "these things taste good," which is the usual fear with healthy foods.

I'll post pictures of our mandu feast later on.

Have a great weekend!

Food Log for the day

Breakfast:

1 cup of coffee with soy milk and stevia

1 Monster Green Smoothie:

• 2 bananas
• 1/4 of a fresh pineapple
• 1 1/2 cups of water
• 1 handful of baby spinach
• 1 scoop of Michael's Super Defense Food Powder

Morning Snack

1 piece of peanut butter toast
1 glass of water

Lunch:

2 vegan Italian sausages (Lightlife)
1 red bell pepper
1/2 vidalia onion
3/4 cup of chunky tomato sauce
2 glasses of water

Afternoon Snack#1:

1 bottle of raspberry Guayakai Yerba Mate (16 oz)

Afternoon Snack#2:

1 glass of water
2 oz Terra Stripes and Blues Chips

Wow, these are really good!

I love Terra chips; their exotic vegetable chips, like sweet potato, yucca and taro chips are outstanding. These are no exception.

Dinner:

1 monster Green Smoothie

• 2 bananas
• 1/4 of a fresh pineapple
• 1 1/2 cups of water
• 1 oz of spinach
• 1 scoop of Michael's Super Defense Food Powder

Notes:

• My earlier blog post has got me all het-up over this issue of food-activism. I'm no wide-eyed naïf (ha!) but even I, in all my jaded cynicism, was surprised by the level of corruption and greed between the U.S. government and the food industry. Before reading these books, I had actually thought that the government had more power than it does, and that there could be no way that our elected representatives would let the rights of the many (read: all of us) be outweighed by the interests of a few wallets.
  
  How revolting that it's not so.



• The girls had Tofupups for lunch. Now over the years I've bought tofupups, smart dogs or Yves's brand of meatless hot dogs more often than regular meat hot dogs, mostly because I found the idea regular of hot dogs, that is, stuffing all the leftover bits of "whatever's left and then some" to be pretty revolting.
  
  In all that time, the girls have never complained about tofu dogs tasting yucky or meaty franks being better, so there ya go. :)
  
  The way I see it, a good deal of the flavoring in any sausage is in the spices, not the particular meat. Very often sausage makers used heavy spicing to disguise what sort of meat and other stuff was inside the casing.
  


• They've been asking me for deli meats for their lunches. Now, Lightlife and Yves do make fake ham and turkey deli slices, but compared to the deli counter, it's not exactly frugal. Still, I'll see what I can do. I need to get them involved in coming up with creative lunch ideas to fill their laptop lunchbox Bento boxes.


• I have become seriously hooked on these Green Smoothies. I get so that I crave it during the day now.
  
  Wegman's had organic bananas on sale for 69¢/lb, and the regular bananas were 49¢/lb, so I bought four bunches of the organic bananas, at only 20¢ more per pound. Totally worth it. I got two containers of cored organic pineapple, and a huge 11-oz package of organic baby spinach. I've been using the smaller scoop that came with the Michael's powder and haven't felt it to be overpowering at all.
  

Day 6 : Refreshed

Yesterday I was cranky and irritable after the stressful meltdown I had with my kids. We had some long heart-to-hearts last night about behavior and why we act the way we do. We each pinky-swore that we were going to do out best to think about what's right. *sigh*

For me, I have to count to 10 before losing my shit. The girls though. OMG do they fight with each other over the littlest thing. They still seem to be in competition for my attention.

Anyway, I woke up feeling refreshed. We all did. I made sure we went to bed a bit earlier. I got a fan for each of us to have in our rooms, and I opened the windows. This morning everyone was more cheerful. I wasn't starving. It was like starting over with a clean slate. :)

Breakfast:

1 cup of coffee with soy milk and stevia
1 glass of water
6 almonds
1 banana

Morning Snack #1:

Green smoothie

• 2 bananas
• 1 mango
• 4 oz baby spinach
• 1 cup of water
• 3 ice cubes

Lunch:

1 garlic portobello burger
1 tomato
1/2 zucchini
1/3 large English cucumber
2 T hummus
pumpkin seeds
crunchy sprouts
alfalfa sprouts
1 glass of water

Afternoon Snack#1:

3 small spoonfuls of pb straight out of the jar
6 almonds
10 peanuts
8 dried blueberries
2 glasses of water

Afternoon Snack#2

6 peanut butter energy bites*
3 small whole wheat flatbreads
2 glasses of water

Dinner:

1 flatbread
1 glass of water

Notes:

• I sat down with the girls and watched Supersize Me with them. What they managed to understand of the movie amazed them. I'm glad. I think that they're beginning to understand why I don't want them eating fast food. I hope that they remember this movie and see why I'll say "No," to cruising through the drive through.
• I think that the next time I have them overnight, I'll suggest the next morning that we do a yoga or a workout video together. They really like it when we do something all together, and this is a good opportunity to get all three of us active together. Lucy is always picking my Turbo Jam videos and asking to do them. I keep saying no because I feel as though I'll look like a fat pig. How stupid is that?! I feel guilty for discouraging her because of some sort of pride or vanity or something. I need a bitch-slap to the head.
• I'll look into the local mega-YMCA too and see how much a family membership is and what facilities and lessons they offer.
• I got really hungry at about noon. I decided to make my homemade falafel and flatbread for dinner, but while I was waiting for the bread to rise I was craving peanut butter and whipped up the PB energy bites. Then, of course, when I was making the flatbreads, I scarfed down three right as they came off the griddle. I may do something lighter for dinner and save the falafel for tomorrow.
• Maybe I should have had the green smoothie first thing instead of waiting to eat breakfast.
• Carbs are my downfall, bread especially. A lot of fruit and vegetables tomorrow.
  

*Peanut Butter Energy Bites

I whipped up this recipe on the spur of the moment. Not bad.

1/4 cup peanut butter
1 T agave nectar
2 T sesame seeds
1/4 cup wheat germ
3 T flaxseed meal

Mix all ingredients well with a spoon and then shape them into balls and and roll them in a mixture of additional flaxseed meal and wheat germ.

Day 5: Energetic Bordering on Manic

Last night, I don't know if it was because it was a bit warmer or what, but it took forever for me to fall asleep. When I was lying in bed, wide awake at 2 am, staring at the ceiling I thought, "Oh boy am I going to be hurting tomorrow morning."

But no. I woke up at 5:30 bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, not ravenous, not dying for caffeine.

I don't get it. I'm either on the verge of a hypo-manic episode or eating healthy for 5 days has had a significant effect already!

I'll be making that carrot salad again. My older daughter requested it. I am very pleased that the girls are taking an interest in what I'm doing and deciding to give it a try themselves. They fell in love with soy milk yesterday. We'll see if a few weeks of no milk might not improve my younger daughter's stomach issues.

Breakfast:

1 slice whole-grain toast with peanut butter
1 glass of water
1 cup of coffee with soy milk and stevia

Morning Snack#1:

1/4 cup diced jicama* (see Notes)
1/2 tomato hollowed out filled with 1 T hummus
12 almonds
1 glass of water

Lunch:

1 garlic portobello burger
1/3 of red bell pepper
1 tomato
1 zucchini
crunchy sprouts
1/4 cup hummus
2 glasses water

Noon Snack:

apple
1 glass of water

Afternoon Snack:

popcorn (no butter)
1 glass of water

Dinner:

2 slices whole grain toast with pb
3 glasses of water

Late Snack:

banana

Notes:

• Man, I am hungry today! I didn't sleep very long last night, and I'm not tired, but I am hungry.
• I am also craving salt.
  
• About jicama. This has been touted as the "Mexican potato," probably thanks to the popularity of low-carb diets. I've read in several places that we can replace our craving for french fries and other potatoes with jicama. It's got a very low glycemic load, so it doesn't have the carbs to spike our blood sugar. They say you just slice it up, sprinkle a little seasoning on it and presto! Guilt-free fries!
  
  Bullshit.
  
  Now I actually like jicama; it provides a satisfactory crunch and has a light taste, but it is in no way potato-like despite its appearance. It is juicy and slightly sweet. The best way to describe it is as a cross between a water chestnut and a pear. It makes a lovely snack, but if you bite into one expecting the lovely, greasy mouth-feel and tongue-dancing saltiness that you get from fries, you'll be seriously disappointed.
• OK I know I said this earlier, but oh my GOD, I'm hungry. It's 10:50 am and I'm having my second morning snack. I wonder if this is tied to the pb toast I had for breakfast. I've also noticed that I need to keep up my water consumption.
• I have noticed that the nights I have my kids here it's a little more difficult. I get scattered and distracted when I'm running around taking care of them. The stress level is higher, and I've long known that one of my responses to stress is to cope with food.
• (6 pm)Wow, do I ever react to stress with food and food cravings. We had a busy afternoon. I took the kids to the movies and we shared a plain popcorn and had bottled water instead of soda. Everything was fine until the ride home, when they started fighting. I started yelling and immediately I craved nachos. Salty, cheesy, crunchy, greasy carb-heaven. And soda. Sweet, sweet liquid Satan. Even as I made my dinner of peanut butter toast, I knew I should be eating a salad of fresh raw veggies.
  
• (8 pm)I am sitting here, tired, cranky and irritable. I have that itchy feeling I get when I don't want anyone near me. I'm snappish still because I will get no break from the kids until tomorrow. If I were married, I could leave the room and go off by myself while my spouse took a turn with them. I have no escape. Hell, I told the kids that before I was going to make supper was going to to take a nice calming shower, and the younger kid had to come in and pester me because "I just want to be with you always, Mommy." Yes, even while I am shaving my pits. Jesus I need some locks on these doors.
• The thing is, I am not hungry at all, the craving came about as a knee-jerk reflex to my stress level going up.
• My energy level has tanked because I got so ticked off earlier.
  

Day 3: Weird dreams & thoughts on my kids

Oh my God, my dreams last night! I had a ton of food-related dreams; some people were tempting me with bags of chips. Another time, I broke down and bought a bag of potato chips, but the cashier and bagger withheld them from me since my account was flagged as a raw foodist. Weird. There were also 2 erotic dreams in there. Holy smokes.

I first woke up at 5:30 to drag the trash out to the curb, then I laid down on the couch and fell right back into the weird dreams. Then I woke up craving peanut butter and toast. No headaches today and I'm doing great on just 1 cup of coffee.


Note: 10 am: Ok. I just got back from picking up Kid#2 from school because her "tummy hurts." She said that she doesn't feel pukey, just that her stomach hurts. This kids is more of a puker than her sister. She's a huge milk drinker and a grazer, eating smaller meals, but quite often. I asked her what she'd had to eat since I saw her last and she said that they had McDonald's last night and cereal with milk this morning. I have to say I wonder if that has anything to do with it. I am tempted to pull her off drinking so much milk and see if her stomach issues don't improve. Since this is a split-household, it's hard to keep track of what the kids are eating, and I don't want this to turn into some parenting contest either, but the eating habits we have when we are kids set the stage for the rest of our lives. *sigh*

Breakfast:

1 slice whole grain toast with 1 T crunchy peanut butter
2 glasses of water
1 large cup coffee with soymilk and stevia

another glass of water

Morning Snack:

1 large apple (Jonagold, yum!) with peanut butter
1 glass of water

Lunch:

1 garlic portobello veggie burger
1 small zucchini, diced
1 medium tomato, diced
2 T hummus
1/4 cup crunchy sprouts
2 glasses water

Afternoon Snack:

2/3 of an apple
1 T peanut butter
1 glass of water

Dinner:

brown basmati rice with curried red lentils, chopped cherry tomatoes and chopped cucumber
2 glasses of water

Snack:

30 pistachios
1 glass of water

Snack:

small handful of trail mix
4 cherry tomatoes
1 glass of water

Notes:

• My hunger has leveled out, and my body has adjusted to the increase in water; I'm not running to the bathroom every 20 minutes like I was on Monday.
• I'm taking my time eating, not inhaling my food and having at least one full glass of water (10 -12 oz) with each meal.
  
• With the increased amount of raw vegetables and fruits, the food is bulkier, higher in fiber, I really feel fuller, longer.
• No headaches at all today, which is a nice change; I've had constant headaches for the past 6 months
• Ugh, me and carbs. It's only 3/4 of an hour since I finished eating the rice dish for dinner and already I am craving something. I think that the brown basmati rice is too much of a trigger for me. I need to re-read the glycemic index charts and keep choosing foods with lower GI numbers. I even added way more raw veggies than rice, but still feel the cravings. I did ok with the peanut butter toast this morning. I have eliminated all pasta from my diet; I may have to do the same with rice.