In Love

My love affair began a few weeks ago at Gullifty's restaurant in Bryn Mawr. If you ever go there, I highly recommend the warm lentil salad - chock full of mixed greens, roasted red and yellow peppers, lentils and hummus with balsamic vinagrette. (For funguys and fungals, they also add mushrooms). It was love at first bite! And yet it took several weeks for me to actually attempt cooking them myself. I bought some lentils immediately but they sat in my pantry for a bit.

I'm weird about beans. I buy them loose and dry at Whole Foods and put them in pretty containers and label them. Then I wait a while to cook them. Should I soak them first? For how long? In how much water? Yada Yada. Then there's the cooking time.



With lentils, no pre-soaking is required! You just load them into a pan with lots of water and in about 20-30 minutes, you've got your beans, baby!

For 1/4 cup of dry lentils you get: 25% of your daily value of Iron, 60% of your dietary fiber and 13 grams of protein!

Here's what I did with my 1/4 cup: Added it to my brown rice pasta and topped it with slightly sauteed 1/2 cup of diced tomatoes and two garlic cloves. mmmmmm........