cooking lentils – chooktherapy

Made these Lentil Balls with Coconut Curry sauce last night and it was delicious! Thumbs up from the family so it’s on the keep list. Took about an hour all up, so would not be on my weekday list of meals to make, will leave for the weekend when I like to faff a bit more in the kitchen. I used thai green curry paste as that is what I had, and also used green beans and broccoli as no silverbeet as the chooks got loose yesterday and ate it all and left me with the stalks! It was also the first time using nutritional yeast, which I purchased yesterday from Moana Health Shop. They sell it in bulk and were happy to put in my glass jar.

I also discovered from this recipe a delicious way to cook up dried brown/green lentils, they were divine and I will be cooking them up this way from now on. They were much tastier than canned lentils. So next time I cook up some lentils I will cook them up bulk and freeze.

Part of my simple living routine is making a weekly menu each Friday night or very early Saturday morning before I do the weekly shop. I have found over the years that it saves me time during the week as I don’t have to think about what I am having for dinner, I just grab the recipe in the morning, whoever is home first will start the prep and the rest of us will chip in to bring it all together.

I find this also saves money as I don’t have to pop into the shop for one item which invariably will turn into about 5 or 6 items and snack foods. I also have less wasted food. I tend to look for recipes that will have leftovers to freeze. I only make up the menu for dinners as lunches are generally leftovers/sandwich/salad jars and brekky is homemade museli/toast/brekky oat cups. weekends maybe a cooked brekky.

This weeks challenge was to use up some items lurking in the pantry like the dried brown lentils. We are not vegetarian, we tend to use meat as a flavouring, for example, 500 gm chuck steak, has made up a big pot of beef, bacon, carrot and chickpea stew that will have crunchy herb dumplings on the top for dinner tonight, with leftover stew going into the freezer for another meal another night. We do, however appreciate great vegetarian meals and lentils happen to be my favourite legume.

I have tried to reduce the amount of canned lentils/beans so I don’t have to recycle the cans and I have moved back to buying lentils and beans in bulk, cooking up a big batch and freezing in reused glass jars (or whatever Tupperware container I have). Ensure you leave head room in the jars. I do still keep a couple of cans in stock as they are so very handy for whipping up lentil peanut butter patties for burger night.