Thanks

Thanks for yesterday's six-word comments! We had a lovely variety there. Speaking of thanks, when I unbox my Misfits food, I thank aloud the farmworkers who picked, the packers who packed, and the cheerful people who deliver. 

When I use an egg, I thank the hen, likewise fish and chicken. I think this is part of cooking. I was happy when I received my copy of the Together cookbook, that the women who contributed recipes often mentioned working prayerfully and thoughtfully. I suspect it's good for digestion, too. To me, prayer has nothing to do with religion or kneeling around. It's the action of living and noticing and just being glad about it. 

So above is the food I made yesterday, on the way to the  shakshuka page, when I noticed this spicy red lentil recipe, and went for it. It was a lovely meditative time in the kitchen, and I added in a couple of those plant based sausages, no meat, and was very happy with my resulting three meals.

a handful of cilantro fitted right in

 The flatbread is to ensure nothing is left on the plate. This is originally an Ethiopian food,  where bread sometimes acts as a plate, or to scoop up the food. 

I'll soon need to make a new batch of berbere, the spice mix you need for this dish. It also uses plenty of ginger and garlic, with an onion base, and is definitely, as is a lot of Ethiopian food, a dish for spice lovers.

The other thing going on is a jigsaw puzzle. This is a Springbok a make I like because it has some weird and interesting shapes, beyond the usual peg and gap type puzzle pieces. 

I finished The Plot, and it turned out to be about theft that was so much more profound than plagiarizing a plot idea, really good. It had shades of the old Christie short story In a Lordly Dish, which itself is a shade of an Old Testament story. Good provenance. I really recommend this writer, but in book form, so you can read at your own pace.

Speaking of doing things a bit differently, I fancy trying knitted or woven lettering, probably blanket square, this kind of thing, this one being from a lovely current knitalong mitten kit from Tatters, but the idea is ancient.

This one incorporates a poem, and I'm wondering if a tiny and powerful Basho poem might work. Anyway, we'll see (!)

Happy day,  everyone, and I hope to hear soon from the people in the storm, which just brushed by us, not as severe as feared. 

Red Lentils Without Soda Bread

Well, the recipe, here actually has the dish with soda bread, but I didn't feel like making it, already have good wholewheat in the house anyway.

So since I had various bags of lentils around, when I found this recipe on twitter, it seemed like a good idea.  Fast, good food, not too laborious. 

Here's the makings

The recipe talks about cilantro, a handful, but I didn't have any on hand, so I subbed a handful of mixed spearmint and rose scented geranium leaves, worked fine.  And it's a brit recipe, in metric and in ounces, so I just guessed as I went. 

And here's the result

This resulted in quite a bit of extra water, seen here in the background, as well as lentils.  I spooned off the water, then mixed with the leftover lentils, blended with the immersion blender, and now I have two containers of lentil soup in the freezer for some time when I fancy them.  I'll probably add in some coconut milk when I reheat, too. This dish was a bit low on salt and other flavors, so I'd use more salt next time and probably a lot more garlic and chili pepper. And maybe some curry powder.

It's done with red lentils, which as you know, cook down faster than the other kind, because they're the peeled version.  So they make a nice cooked sort of mass in about half an hour.  The other sorts of lentils tend to keep their shape, which is okay if that's what you want.

While all this activity was going on in the kitchen, I noticed right outside the window a praying mantis hard at work in the Russian sage 

Haven't seen one this season, and it's always a welcome sight.  They are deadly on mosquitoes, and since I provided a snack for same on my brief trip out for the herbs, I'm glad to know she's at work on the issue.