Foodsicles

Lentil Recipe

Do not use any measuring utensils. Freemeasure!

I made this tonight for us to eat and it was veery eazy. It was tasty too, especially with the plain yogurt I just made yesterday. The recipe originally called for leeks but instead I substituted it with chives and celery.

Ingredients:

2 stalks of celery
A bunch of chives. They are weeds in our garden!
2 cloves of garlic
some cumin
some salt
some black pepper
Lentils (half a bag is what I used)

1. In a separate bowl or pot, rinse lentils then soak them so there's just a bit of water covering them.

2. Mince garlic and chop up the celery and chives.

3. Add a generous amount of olive oil to a pot (a Dutch oven/ceramic pot is what the recipe called for and we happened to have one from the Asian grocery store so I used it but I'm sure a steel pot would work fine) and saute the celery and chives briefly, until the celery begins to look a little translucent on the outside and the chives are soft. Then, add the garlic and saute until garlic smell is wafting everywhere.

3. Add cumin, salt, black pepper. The original recipe called for 1 1/2 tsp cumin and then I stopped paying any attention at all so I don't know how much salt and pepper was supposed to be added. Stay on the side of too little cumin rather than too much, otherwise it will be bitter like a thrice divorced man. Oh, and the recipe actually wanted cayenne but I didn't have that so I substituted black pepper instead. Be generous with the pepper.

4. Drain lentils and add to the pot with celery, chives, spices. Add in water (here's where it pays off to measure I guess, because my lentils were a little watery) to however many cups of lentils you originally used. There are directions on the bag usually. Otherwise, just freemeasure and take chances, make mistakes, get messy! Ms. Frizzle, anyone?

5. Add salt and a bay leaf* then let it all simmer for however long it takes until the lentils soften.

6. Optionally, as you taste it while it cooks, add lemon juice if you want some piquancy. Kelly didn't like it with the lemon juice so it's really just to taste but I thought it was much better when I squeezed some in.

7. Eat! Alone, with rice, with yogurt, with bread.

*I'm convinced this does nothing but placebo the shit out of the dish, kind of like that stone in stone soup

While I'm at it, I might as well put the CRAZY EASY yogurt recipe up.

Yogurt

You will need:
A half gallon of milk (i use 2% because whole is too much and skim is nasty ass)
2-3 Tbsp starter yogurt, plain is better
A food thermometer


1. Put yo milk in a pot. Turn the stove on to medium heat and slowly heat the milk up, stirring gently to avoid milk depositing on the bottom of the pot as a film. You want the milk to reach 185 degrees.

2. Fill your sink with cold water. Once the milk has reached approx 185 deg, immerse the pot in the cold water and cool the milk until 120 deg.

3. Once it has reached that temperature, take out the pot and whisk in your 2-3 Tbsp of starter yogurt. Can be store bought, I got the kind with low fat not no fat. I also wasn't too careful when measuring. The key is to thoroughly incorporate the yogurt into your milk, although even that I didn't do too meticulously. Huh. Apparently do whatever you want and it works.

4. After you've added the starter yogurt, pour the warm milk+yogurt mixture into jars. Doesn't really matter if you use Ball canning jars all legitimate like or a giant clean pickle jar. Just seal it.

5. Turn on your oven light and place the jars of yogurt in there for 10-11 hours. The longer you keep them there the thicker the yogurt will be, supposedly.

6. EAT ON EVERYTHING

Click click

I don't know how common this is but sometimes I find myself doing an emotional turtle/snail/hermit crab and take perverse satisfaction out of the fact that I'm sealing myself hermetically into this little shell. It's really comfortable, and I like it in here thank you very much. Keep Out. Since this can't only be a melodramatic post about metaphorical shells I will include a picture of Costa Rica at sunset.

Which has the added benefit of kicking mopiness in the ass and reminding me that there are inherently beautiful things in the world that can't be exhausted. Someday soon I will make a post about Costa Rica but today I'm just gonna clean some more, read some more, make a to do list, and go to bed.