Sometimes you just have to take a break, I don’t mean life or blogging, I mean meat, I mean excessive eating. Ouch right? Well actually it has been nice, I bought a few different grains and lentils to spice up the week so we won’t get bored. I think that is why people find eating vegetable only ( I haven’t excluded dairy) meals so hard, they get bored and are afraid to try new things. Even I do this, then I have to remind myself it is only a vegetable, what’s it going to do to you?

So I bought some red quinoa(really delicious and pretty) and Australian blue lentils. The blue lentils are lovely and so pretty, they are pretty much French puy lentils grown in Australia, which is great as they are cheaper and Australian grown. If you have trouble finding them try health food stores, they are packaged up by the Natural grocer in Australia (If you live near Alexandria go to the factory outlet).
Today my good efforts were almost sabotaged, so instead of the lovely little lentil salad, I had to rethink my options. Right now, I have a confession to make, I kind of make stuff up as I go along. I don’t mean experimenting and fiddling with recipes or coming up with a plan of attack before I start to cook. I mean starting and then deciding what to do like a “Choose your own adventure” book. Luckily, I don’t know if it is through talent or shear luck my adventures generally work out, and this one was a beauty. Just to exemplify here is a quote from Case ” Is that guacamole, Vegertarians would KILL for this”, that my friends was when I knew my plan was working.

*Note: This might look like alot of work, but I found it a really easy and quick meal to prepare, which is why I have laid the recipe out like that below. The use of the blender or a little mini chopper will help with preptime. But the meal can easily be made with out one*

Stuffed Potatoes
Potatoes to baked in oven at 180C for 45 mins to and hour depending on size

Lentil Sauce
1 tin of tomatoes (the best you can get I use Cavesina)
2 cloves of garlic
1 chilli ( or as much as you like)
1 red onion
250 gms of blue lentils cooked til tender in plenty of cold water
S&P to taste
Olive

Avacado sauce/Guacamole
Per 2 people
1/2 avacado
1/4 bunch of mint
1/2 chilli
1 clove of garlic
Fresh lime juice
1 dessertspoon of thick natural yoghurt

Salad
Some nice fresh colourful veggies, I used rocket, carrot, capsicum and cucumber.

In a blender pulse the tomatoes, chilli, onion and garlic a couple of times, it should be alittle chunky still. Heat a frypan up then add alittle olive oil, pour the tomato sauce in and cook on meduium until the colour of the sauce begins to change from red til more orange. At this point add the lentils and cook for a few more minutes until the sauce has thickened up.

Assemble your salad on half the plate

Avacado sauce
In the blender add the mint, garlic and chilli, pulse so that it is minced. Removed a quarter to sprinkle on top of your salad. Then add the avacado, yoghurt and lime juice to taste. Pulse so that is is almost combined.

Squeeze alittle lime juice over the salad and pour alittle olive oil or flaxseed oil over as well.

Remove potato from the oven, once they are on the plates immediatly slice them in half, place a big spoon of lentils on top, grate alittle cheese if you want and then a dollup of the avacado sauce.

I hope your family likes this as much as mine!

This entry was posted on Monday, February 20th, 2006 at 1:20 pm and is filed under Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.