We're back! Now with Middle eastern lentils with fragrant rice

Hi everyone! Sorry for the long hiatus. Things have been pretty crazy for me the past few months on multiple fronts, and (thankfully) Christian took over much of the cooking for us. With the new year and all, I'm re-evaluating my current time/energy allocation, and hope to put a little more effort into cooking (as does Christian :)

Anyway, I do miss food blogging, and wanted to start getting back into it. My body's (surprisingly) been craving vegetarian the past few days - maybe it's all the ridiculously delicious Indian meat dishes my parents made for us over the holidays, but all I seem to want now are vegetables. Making a variation on Middle Eastern lentils (adapted from here: http://www.eatyrgreens.com/middle-eastern-spiced-lentils-kale-with-caramelized-onions-mujadarah/ and here: http://www.eatyrgreens.com/fragrant-yellow-rice/ ) promised to use up all our farm box kale and collard greens, plus made enough food to last for several days - the best kind of cooking, in my book! I completely believe in making large batches of food on Sundays, and patting yourself on the back for your forethought on weeknights. :)

Actually, there's perhaps not much to blog about, except that this makes for a very satisfying dinner (and lunches, I foresee) when it's cold out. I roughly doubled the recipe, but since I don't really follow recipes, I improvised as I went along. We used yellow lentils since that's what we had on hand. I didn't add as much water as they suggested, since I figured the two bunches of greens would also release water - ~7 cups water was still a little too much, so I kept it open and let some water boil off as it cooked. And I caramelized the entire supply of onions we had on hand because what the recipe says is true: you can never, ever have enough caramelized onions.

And after a gin and tonic, I started throwing random spices in the lentils because I feared it didn't have enough flavor (based on wafting like a good little scientist, not on actually tasting) - but the garlic powder, hot chili powder, and tons of ground cumin really worked out well.

Made the fragrant rice to go with it with lots of turmeric, but accidentally used ground cinnamon instead of whole cinnamon, which still worked out well. Also used basmati rice, which is always tasty.

 
Served with a dollop of Greek yogurt, and added even more hot chili powder and ground cumin, and we were good to go! Looking forward to the leftovers for lunch!