Loafing Around

Hello! This blog post will be kind of short because I’m a tired teddy bear!

This afternoon, Ryan, my mom and I took Ella out on an easy three-mile walk.  I think she enjoyed being an “only dog” for about 50 minutes.  That’s definitely something she doesn’t get much of here at the hotel for dogs!

When we got back, it was going on 5:30 and we started debating what to make for dinner.  We were all hungry, so we pulled out the leftover olive tapenade from Friday and some crackers.  I was feeling extra snack-tastic…I had a package of somersaults, as well as about 6 or 7 crackers with BIG scoopfuls of tapenade. 

I was kind of ruining my appetite, but luckily we ended up eating dinner pretty late (8:00), so by the time it was ready, I was hungry again.  Surprise, surprise. 

We ended up making the Old-Fashioned Lentil Loaf from The Vegan Table.  This is a recipe that I’ve been wanting to try for a while, and seeing Kim’s own vegan loaf gave me the extra push I needed.  We also had all of the ingredients on hand, so it meant that we didn’t have to make a trip the grocery store.  I love the grocery store as much as the next guy (actually, I love it a WHOLE lot more…I’m kind of weird like that), but there are just some nights when you don’t feel like leaving the house, you know?

This lentil loaf was good! It was a little time-intensive, but very easy to prepare.  First, you boil a big pot of lentils (duh!):

While the lentils were cooking, we prepared the other ingredients: sauteed onions and garlic, bread crumbs, walnuts, ketchup, parsley, thyme and soy sauce.  We also added some brown rice that we had on hand from the black-eyed peas the other night.  And, though the recipe called for vegetarian Worcestershire sauce, we had none, so that was omitted from our loaf.

Then, after the lentils have cooked through (about an hour), you combine everything so that it looks like this:

Finally, you press the mix into a loaf pan, top with more ketchup, and transfer it to the oven, where it cooks for about an hour.

Going into the oven:

And coming out (minus my serving!):

We only cooked ours for 45 minutes, because we were HAUNGRY!  You’re also supposed to let it sit and further solidify for ten minutes after taking it out of the oven, and we skipped that step too.  Because of all this, our “loaf” was a little loose.  No matter—it tasted great!

My plate (plus some whole wheat bread, unpictured):

Just like with real meatloaf, the corner piece is the best!

The flavor here was delicious.  It definitely didn’t taste like a “meat substitute” meatloaf—the lentils were present and flavorful.  I think there are things that you could do to make it a little more “meat-like,” and I’d like to play around with the recipe sometime in the future.  I think mushrooms could be used to increase the “meatiness” of it, if that was something that was being sought after. 

In any case, I’d give it two thumbs up for a lentil loaf!

As we ate, we watched the film Vicki Christina Barcelona, which neither Ryan nor I had seen.  It was cute!  I don’t think that Penelope Cruz deserved an Oscar for it (seriously?), but it was cute all the same. 

There may or may not have been dark chocolate involved.  Actually, I’ll be frank: there definitely was dark chocolate involved, and frankly, it was a bit disappointing—kind of grainy and overly sugary, even though it was 80% dark, organic, fair-trade chocolate.  Sigh.  The brand was Taza chocolate—have you heard of it?  I picked it up at Central Market when we were in Seattle.  It didn’t hold a candle to Theo’s dark chocolate!  It was stone-ground—maybe that explains the graininess?

Anyway—we’re off to bed.  Guess starting tomorrow, the holidays are officially over.  Even though we have another week of “vacation” down here in Louisiana, our work is starting to pick back up.  Ryan is doing a lot of syllabus work, and the online classes that I teach start up again tomorrow (we got a two week winter break over the holidays).  Nothing lasts forever, eh?

Hope you had a great weekend, friends.  Night!