Happy, Shiny Wednesday Weigh-In: 7/1/2009 and LENTIL SALAD!

Office fire drills gave me a mild case of the bitchies today, almost dampening my Heavy Rebel vibe. But after I got home and set to packing, cooking vaycay meals and doing final hotel bookings (Priceline massages my gambling pleasure spot), the blood pressure went down again.

Hobbes and Sebastian are a bit nervous, though. They know that when Mommy and Daddy fuss around the house and bring out the suitcases, that means that they are going on an extended visit to the grandparents. Again. *growl*

Tonight, I made a batch of gluten-free, vegan, organic lentil salad (mujadara). And, I'm not going to lie. It's all kinds of awesome. And cheap.

Here's the recipe, but I don't have time to calculate the actual nutritional value, so you're on your own:

1 cup dried lentils
2 large onions or 3 medium onions
1/2 tsp. Garam Masala
1/4 tsp. Cumin
1 1/2 cups of cooked brown rice (substitute canola oil for the butter to make it vegan)
Salt
Pepper

Sort and rinse the lentils well. Put in medium saucepan and add enough water to cover the lentils by about 2 inches. Turn heat on high and boil for about 15 minutes.

While lentils are boiling, halve the onions and cut into medium thin slices. Sautee in a hot fry pan with about a tablespoon of canola oil (don't use olive oil since you're cooking at a high temperature). Basically, fry those onions until they are really dark brown, almost black. This is going to take you at least 15-20 minutes. The idea is to cook the onions until they are a dark carmelized paste.

Drain the lentils, add about another cup or so of fresh water and boil again until the lentils are tender. Add the onions, salt and pepper to taste (it's up to you how salty you want this...I didn't use exact measurements), garam masala and cumin. Cook for about another 5 minutes. Add in the rice and cook for another 5 minutes. The end result is this:

Yeah, it looks like mealy dog poo. But it tastes fantastic. It's got great contrasting textures and an umami taste--savory, sweet and a hint of smokiness and that something-something from the aromatic spices in the garam masala and cumin.

Serve the lentil salad warm or at room temperature over a bed of chopped romaine lettuce, cucumbers, red onions, sliced red bell pepper and tomatoes that have been tossed in a light lemon & olive oil dressing.

The dressing was pretty simple:

4 lemons, juiced (red wine vinegar works well as a replacement if the lemons are not your thing)
3/4 cup olive oil
2 cloves crushed garlic
2 teaspoons dried oregano
some chopped fresh mint if you have it, about 1/2 tablespoon or more
some salt
couple pinches of sugar to cut the acidity
ground black pepper

Wisk together to emolsify and voila:

This is so much better than fried starch and mechanically reclaimed chicken that's likely to be sold at the shindig.

Oh, and before I forget and post this tomorrow, giving anyone the impression that I might be scale dodging, I weighed in this morning at an even 153.00 pounds*. That's a 1.4 pound loss from last week. Put another way, that's 3 weeks' worth of Jack S**t's Half Pound Challenges. Call it paying it forward to compensate for the damage I'll be doing this weekend!

I've been working out strictly to music this week and will probably continue to do so in the near future. Video games and watching constant streams of Michael Jackson on all the morning shows couldn't raise my heart rate above 145, even during the peaks of my interval training.

*Sans waxing. No time to groom. Thank goodness that the bottom half of my swimsuit has a skirt edge!