Vegetable Lentil Loaf

It's been a tough week this week so I haven't quite made it back to talk about how the Vegetable Lentil Loaf went on Saturday. Sorry about that.

I served it with brown gravy in an attempt to "disguise" the lack of meat. It went down okay with DH and I although we're still struggling to get used to the texture (a bit like the chickpea patties). The kids were a little bit less than impressed. My 9 year old's comment during the dinner conversation was "I'm going to be the healthiest kid in my class". It was said in a way that suggested being healthy wasn't his most favourite thing in the world. LOL. I told him I'd be quite happy for him to be the healthiest kid in his class. :-) As I've been introducing new foods I've been talking to the kids about the importance of eating healthily and having a wider variety of foods in our diet.

DH has suggested that I use some mince in it next time to kind of disguise the texture a bit. While it will then no longer be vegetarian, we both feel it's more important to increase our intake of beans and legumes and reduce our intake of meat, rather than strictly try to eat vegetarian meals. So we need to find ways to do this that we're all going to enjoy, rather than "suffer" through. Personally I think it's just a matter of adjusting our taste buds. But slowly, slowly is the way to go here so I don't have a revolt on my hands. LOL.

There was a little bit left over and I had a couple of slices cold for lunch the next day. It was delicious cold!!!! DH tried it cold but wasn't quite so impressed. He did heat up a couple of slices and had it with a plate of salad for lunch though - so obviously he didn't really mind it. There was one thin slice left so today I diced it up and chucked it into a pot of soup I'm making.

In case anyone is interested, here is the recipe. It is my own adaptation of a recipe that was posted on one of my yahoo groups. I seem to have this problem with making a recipe exactly as written - always have to change it a little bit to make it "mine" (or to suit our tastes). :-)

VEGETABLE LENTIL LOAF

3 cups green lentils (the original recipe says brown but I couldn't find any)
2 carrots, grated
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 cup breadcrumbs
200g tomato paste
1/2 onion, grated (if you like chunks of onion you can dice it)
1 egg, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 180C
Grease loaf pan
Process/blend half lentils until smooth (I just stuck my stab mixer into the whole lot a few times so they were partially blended)
Mix ingredients together
Press into tin and bake 30-35 minutes
Leave to stand in tin for 5 minutes before turning out


This week I also cooked up some diced steak in the crockpot. I added a tin of beef and vegetable soup I had in the cupboard plus some gravy mix and cornflour. The first night we had a steak pie (by adding a sheet of puff pastry). I then added some red kidney beans (some that I'd prepared earlier lol) from the freezer to stretch it a bit and made some of that into shepherds pie. The kids didn't bat an eyelid at the beans in the shepherd's pie. DH proclaimed that one a success! :-) I really quite enjoyed it. So we'll do that one again.

Today I've been making up a big batch of vegetable soup in the crockpot. I started with some yellow split peas and added a tin of pureed tomatoes that I had in the cupboard as well as some onion, garlic and mixed herbs. Later I added some chopped carrot, potato and sweet potato which were the vegies I happened to have on hand. I added another frozen container of red kidney beans and also wanted to add a can of chickpeas. When I grabbed the can of chickpeas and opened it, I discovered it was a can of cannelinni beans. So they went in as well as the can of chickpeas. Taste tested some this afternoon. It is delicious!!!! Such a comforting thing to have for lunch on a cold day. And is filled with lots of goodies. The crockpot is almost full so that's about 6 litres of soup. Will freeze some I think. Haven't worked out how much it cost me to make but I'm guessing not very much.

Can you tell I'm having lots of fun finding ways to add beans, peas and legumes to our daily diet? :-) I've almost used up all that I bought last shop so will have to stock up again soon.