Birthday week!

For the past week or so, I've been intending to write a post. Whenever I had a topic in mind, I had no time to write it. Once I got the time, I had already lost interest in the topic.

So here I am, recapping my birthday week.

I had school off on Monday, so I visited my parents on Sunday afternoon. We had a birthday dinner for me, and per my request, we had a grill-out with wine! :) I chose a grill-out because I thought it would be an easy way to accommodate my meatless diet; all I would need is a veggie burger, and I would fit in! Of course, my mom messed this up by serving grilled chicken instead--thanks, mom! :) That drew lots of attention to me, and for the first time, my dad noticed that I wasn't eating meat. Considering this has been going on for half a year, I guess you could say he's not very observant!

On the day of my birthday (Thursday), I expected to hear a "Happy birthday!!" or two from a few students who remembered since I had been announcing it for weeks. I received much, much more.

Within the first minute of walking into the school, one of my students got up from her table, ran up to me, and wished me happy birthday. Immediately after, a group of girls did the same thing. After I passed, I heard them arguing behind me about who was "first" to wish me happy birthday. :)

When I entered my classroom, I had a vase of yellow daisies on my desk from my cooperating teacher (she knows yellow is my favorite color flower), along with a bag of lentils (she always hears me rave about them!), dark chocolate (she knows it's my favorite), and several colored pens for grading (I complained once about how I didn't have any). I was stunned! Not only did she go above and beyond what was necessary, but her gifts were perfect! They were so "me." Other people who walked in and saw them were like, "........lentils?" But I was over-the-moon thrilled.

My first period class sang happy birthday to me. My second period class gave me a signed card, an Easter basket full of candy, and a book of poems (I just finished teaching them a poetry unit!). By fifth period, I had three cards/drawings from individual students, a large poster signed by almost all of my 100+ students (and some others whom I've never even met!), and multiple other renditions of the happy birthday song. To top it off, my parents sent red roses to the school, so I got called into the office to get them. I couldn't stop blushing!

My bounty by the end of the day

Needless to say, it was the best birthday ever. It simply reminded me why being a teacher is so satisfying. Despite the fact that I give them homework and make them think and do things they don't always want to do, they still admire/appreciate/adore me...almost as much as I adore them! They may complain one day when I ask them to write 20 examples of imagery to use in their poems, but they turn around the next day and compete to be the first to wish me a happy birthday.

I rounded out my birthday with dinner with my friends at one of my favorite restaurants in town. :) They have cider on tap, which is a rare find in South Dakota!

To complete my birthday week, I chaperoned the middle school dance on Friday night. I took away two things from that experience:

1. The cool thing to do in middle school is huddle in groups around the entrance to the bathrooms. (...I'm just as baffled as you!)

2. "Ice Ice Baby" is still a "cool" song to the current generation of adolescents.

Oh, and to call it a "dance" is a bit of a stretch. It should really be called the "Stand in a Circle with your Friends and Sing the Lyrics to Every Song" event. Or perhaps the "Get Sugar-Drunk on Mountain Dew and Chase Each Other around the School" event. Anything other than a "dance," since very little of that was actually taking place.

Meatless Meatball Marinara

Behold! Heaven on bread. Actually, the bread was heaven, too... Heaven on a plate.

It's even better than the Christmas decorations.

Yes, I know I said I was going to make this two days ago, but you know how life goes. So TODAY, I finally got to work.

Even in my meat-eating days, I've only had a meatball marina sub once. It was last April, right after I temporarily switched to a high-calorie diet. My friend Natalie and I decided to meet for lunch at Subway. I had always gotten the same sub (turkey), but I realized suddenly that this was an excellent opportunity to carelessly pile on the calories. Eagerly, I went on the Subway website and checked out the nutritional information. I scanned the chart for the highest calorie sandwiches. Bam! Meatball marinara. At the time, it was second only to the Big Philly Cheesesteak (although they have since added more in the 500-calorie range).

Oh man. It was pretty good. I am a little skeptical about Subway, due to the high sodium, controversial ingredients in their "fresh" bread, and that AWFUL smell of the restaurants that just CLINGS to your clothes for hours, but this sub was delicious. In a wrong, sick way.

I'm not sure how I got the idea to recreate this sandwich. I've been wanting to incorporate more lentils into my diet, so I was thinking of making meatballs again. And this idea came to me. I was planning on just using regular bread, or perhaps "Thin Buns" (I love those things), but then something better stumbled into my hands. My boss randomly makes Italian-herb baguettes from time to time, and on Tuesday, he had a loaf for me.

He said to me, "When you leave tonight, you can take one of those loaves."

I pursed my lips thoughtfully and replied, "Hmm....maybe!"

To which he replied with a smile, "Oh no, that wasn't a request. That was an order. You're taking one of those loaves." ;)

And then I realized this bread would be perfect for my sandwich. So after weeks of considering this recipe, I finally put it into execution.

The meatballs are adapted from my favorite veggie burger recipe, Jennifer Perillo's lentil burgers. I have raved about these before. They rock, and they're so versatile! When I made this batch, I didn't even shape any of them into patties; I put them all in balls. Some were used for this sandwich, some will be used for pasta, and others will be crumbled up for other things (pasta, chili, etc.). Love this stuff.

Lauren's Lentil Balls

Adapted from lentil burgers from In Jennie's Kitchen

• 1 1/2 cups cooked lentils
• 1/2 onion, finely chopped
• 2 tbsp. water
• 1 tbsp. oil
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 cup oat bran (OR breadcrumbs)
• 1 tsp. sage
• 1 tsp. fennel
• 1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
• 1/4 tsp. salt

Cook the onions in a tablespoon or two of oil over medium high heat until translucent. Remove from heat. (I did this step while my lentils were simmering).

Transfer lentils to a large bowl. Mash or puree with a stick/immersion blender (or do this in your food processor). DON'T puree it all the way! I keep around half of them whole.

In a small bowl, mix water, oil, and baking powder. This is the replacement for the egg (which I never seem to have on hand these days; I guess you could say I've taken on a vegan-inclined diet when cooking at home). So alternatively, you could just use an egg. :) Add the mixture, OR a lightly beaten egg, to the lentils.

Add the onion and oat bran. Mix. Add sage, fennel, black pepper, and salt. Mix again.

Shape into your preferred shape. The possibilities are endless! In fact, I bet if you added more spices (cayenne!!), they would transform into some fantastic breakfast sausages. :)

Refrigerate them for an hour or two (or longer!) before frying in a little oil on all sides.

For the meatball marina sandwich:

After the meatballs were browned on all sides, I added the marina to the pan. As it turns out, this was a terrible idea. Hot pan + cold sauce = sizzle, splatter, and hiss. Duh! (Proof that I'm still a kitchen debutante.) Try heating up the marina separately before adding!

I cut off a 5-inch chunk of the baguette and sliced it in half. I toasted it slightly on our Pizzazz. :)

And then I assembled it all. :) And DANG. It tasted SO GOOD. I actually felt a sense of loss when I had finished it all. I will definitely be using the remains of my baguette to repeat this meal!

What I've been up to..

So I've been pretty active in my kitchen lately, now that I don't have to spend allllllllll my time on homework and reading assignments. For some reason, now of it has ended up on the blog, so I thought I'd sum it all up now. :)

A couple days ago, I made baked oatmeal for the first time. I tried a pumpkin variation, using this recipe. Except I didn't have any eggs, so I vegan-ized it. It was quite wonderful. The only downfall is that baked oatmeal takes so long to make! I can whip up my stove top oatmeal in less than ten minutes, including cook time. This oatmeal requires about half an hour.

Yesterday, I made my signature tomato sauce. I was about halfway through when I remembered I was supposed to be keeping track of how much of everything I put in (so I could share the recipe). So I guess that will have to wait until next time. Anyway, I just used it for some pasta. I used whole wheat linguini, with a ginormous heap of spinach and mixed greens salad with feta and sunflower seeds, drizzled with olive oil to hold it all together. A great meal. :)

Anyway, the real reason I made the tomato sauce was because I had a genius plan for today. Using Jennifer Perillo's lentil burger recipe, I will be making "meatballs." Then, I will assemble it into a meatball marinara sandwich. I have a fantastic loaf of bread that my boss gave me yesterday; it's a garlic-y baguette with Italian herbs on top. My meatballs will love it. :) I will let you know how this all turns out.

And this morning, I made whole wheat pumpkin waffles. They pretty much made my apartment smell like Christmas! Because maple syrup makes me sick, I slathered a light coating of peanut butter on mine, and then lightly drizzled it with honey. Then I tossed on a handful of raisins, for good measure. Num, num, num. :)

Lunch: Meatless Chili Burgers and Sweet Potato Fries

My dream come true: owning a camera that can capture steam rising from hot food.

My other dream come true: this lunch. Wowza. Jennie Perillo's lentil burgers + my meatless chili + oven baked sweet potato fries = heaven.

I wish I would have had a darker backdrop to capture the steam better, but at the time I was too eager to eat. :) So I was taking those pictures as fast as I possibly could!

I Eat Chili in the Summer

Does anything really beat a bowl of chili? Okay, yes. Lots of things. But I just love a good bowl of chili. Especially if it's vegetarian. Because then I can eat it and still feel good about myself. :)

Some days, I wander the kitchen aimlessly, ransacking the cupboards, pushing items around in the fridge, scratching my head, and trying to figure out what in the world I'm actually in the mood for. Other days, I plan ahead, and all day I dream of making this perfectly thought-out meal, and I can barely wait until dinner time to prepare it.

And then there are days like today. It started out looking like I would have another I-don't-know-what-the-heck-I-want kind of days, but then suddenly a Dutch oven full of inspiration splashed me across the face, and I realized I had everything necessary to throw it together, and within twenty minutes, I'm sitting at the table, delivering spoonfuls of satisfaction to my taste buds.

Tonight's inspiration was chili. Yes, chili. I don't care if it's 80 degrees outside. When Lauren wants chili, Lauren eats chili. Which is pretty phenomenal, considering I had never even eaten the spicy stew less than a year ago.

Yes, it's true. I tried chili for the first time just last autumn. I have a slight obsession with soups, so I asked a coworker at the library what her favorite kind was. To my horror (at the time), she responded, "chili." After seeing my look of repulsion, she asked why I didn't like it. (Actually, it was more like, "How could you NOT like chili?!?!?!"

...I had no answer. I realized that I had always avoided it simply because I never used to like beans. But I had never actually tried it, so how could I say I didn't like it?

Luckily for me, my school makes some gosh darn fantastic chili. I tried it the next time I ate on campus, and let's just say my life has never been the same. In fact, falling in love with chili was the first step for me to fall in love with beans. Now I'm a total bean addict.

But when it comes to making chili at home, I always opt for meatless. I've tried replacements: rice? No. Carrots? No. Sweet potato? No. Tofu? Absolutely not. So typically, I just make a beans-only version. But now, I have found my hero.

That's not ground beef. And it's not ground turkey, either!

And you'll never guess what it is. Lentils. YES! It's those gosh darn lentils! Jennifer Perillo is seriously my savior. Last night, I whipped up an ENORMOUS batch of her lentil burgers to store up in the freezer. Yesterday, I used them to make meatballs. Successful. Today, I crumbled them up and used them like ground beef. Also successful! Can you believe it? The entire time I was "browning" them, I was laughing to myself for thinking this would actually work. I was pleasantly surprised at how well they stayed together, and how nicely the taste blended in with the chili (unlike other replacements I tried...yes, tofu, I'm looking at you!). It even LOOKS like ground meat!

It was for sure the most satisfying bowl of chili that has ever come out of my kitchen. Buon appetito!

Homemade pasta to celebrate my half-birthday

Can you believe I've been 21 for six months already? I never thought I'd actually care about being 21, since I was never one of those teenagers that drank all the time and couldn't wait to hit the bars. In fact, my first taste of anything besides wine was on my 21st birthday. Since then, I've really enjoyed getting to try new things, like all the different kinds of wine, homemade strawberry daiquiris, and CIDER.

I always celebrate my half-birthday. I just love any reason to make a day special. :) So to celebrate, I decided to finally try my hand at homemade, whole wheat pasta. What a treat! I spent quite a while in the kitchen, but it turned out beautifully. And I took pictures!

I used my brother's pizza cutter to cut the dough into fettuccine-sized strips. :D

Isn't it precious?? Gosh, I feel so accomplished.

And of course, what celebration would be complete without my beloved Fox Barrel Pear Cider? I love this stuff. Its website describes it like so:

America’s first, truly pure pear-juice based cider line, Fox Barrel makes Pear Ciders that are naturally fermented using 100% pear juice, not from pear juice concentrate, or flavored hard apple cider. Our ciders are filtered cold for extra purity and our Blackberry Pear and Apricot Pear Ciders are infused with natural blackberry or apricot juice.  Fox Barrel contains no added colorants, sugar, sorbate or benzoate preservatives.  No added malt, spirit, grape or apple alcohols, Fox Barrel ciders are smoothed with pure pear juice.

 And this stuff is delicious. Almost as good as Bulmers Pear Cider in Ireland.

For my pasta, I made a homemade tomato sauce with meatballs. But wait! These aren't just any meatballs. Nope. They're vegetarian lentil "meat"balls! I used my leftover lentil patties from yesterday and reshaped them into balls. I added sage and fennel to give them a more sausage-like flavor. The tomato sauce is my own concoction that I always use--some combination of tomatoes (pureed with my immersion blender), olive oil, Italian seasoning, a touch of sugar, black pepper, and salt. Sends me to heaven every time. I haven't used pasta sauce from the jar for almost an entire year! Yay me.

So I knew that fresh pasta only took a minute or two to cook, but dang! I could have sworn they were only in for thirty seconds before they popped up to the top.

The finished product. The verdict = happy half-birthday to me!

The surprise of the meal was definitely the lentil "meatballs." No joke, these almost tasted like meat. I've tried making vegetarian meatballs before, and they were dreadful; the flavors clashed with the flavors of the tomato sauce, and the "meatballs" turned to mush almost as soon as I added the sauce to the pan. But these were just delightful. They stayed crispy on the outside, even after simmering with the sauce. Plus, the lentil pseudo-meatballs had such a neutral flavor that they just blended perfectly with the tomatoes. Heaven. Have I mentioned how much I love lentils?

As for the pasta? They could have been a little thinner, but they were still enjoyable. The entire dish was almost tear-inducing.

More, please? :)

Lentil Burgers (and thoughts on flexitarianism)

My New Year's resolution this year was to take up part-time vegetarianism (aka flexitarianism), which I would achieve by setting a goal to not consume meat more than one meal per day. I had been eating much less meat since moving into my own place, simply because of financial purposes. After reading a few of Michael Pollan's incredible books (and learning: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."), I decided to focus more on fruits, vegetables, beans, and nuts. I quickly realized how this new diet affected me; I simply felt better when I wasn't eating meat. So I decided to make it official with my flexitarianism resolution.

This turned out to be surprisingly easy, as long as I was at my apartment cooking for myself. The challenge was when I was at my parents' house for holidays or weekends. I would have to remind my mom to have vegetarian sides for me to eat, or have pasta and keep the meat as a separate add-in for herself. Or, I would simply have to cook for myself, which I was willing to do.

In the end, I was able to last seven months without ever having meat more than one meal per day. In fact, I went a couple weeks entirely vegetarian, without ever missing meat. So why did I break my resolution?

The night before leaving for Ireland, I thought about the food I would be having. Sure, Europe in general is more vegetarian-friendly than South Dakota, and I'd be able to find some good vegetarian dishes. But I thought about all the traditional dishes of Ireland--very meat-focused. I realized how central to the culture it was. I mean, what is a traditional Irish breakfast without blood pudding and rashers?

An unsure smile after my first bite of blood pudding.

I made the difficult decision to forgo my once-a-day rule while in Ireland, so I could freely experience the culture without restraining myself. I do not regret that decision! Worrying about avoiding meat the whole trip would have certainly stressed me out and taken away from the experience. I had enough to think about.

Unfortunately, I found it difficult to get back to my routine when I returned home. So I've decided to go vegetarian for the month of September, to make up for all the cheating I've done in August. This last week of August will be spent snarfing down all my meat-related leftovers so I can get them out of the fridge for September.

To prepare, I decided to try out another veggie burger recipe. I used to eat these often, but I never truly found one I genuinely loved. Until now! I tried Jennifer Perillo's lentil burger recipe today, and it was a hit. It's a very basic recipe, and I can imagine adding herbs and spices for variety (sage and fennel? garlic? cayenne pepper? The possibilities are infinite).

I've never had lentils before. When I went to buy them, I quickly realized my store does not carry a canned version, which meant I would finally have to tackle my fear of preparing dry beans. This is something I have always planned on doing (eventually) out of financial and health concerns (so much sodium in the canned versions!), but it's one of those things that I simply "never got around to." Well, I had to get around to it. 

Luckily, lentils are a great bean to start with. Unlike the other beans, they require no soaking. As a bonus, they have a nice, neutral flavor. They possibly just became my new favorite meat alternative, which pinto beans previously held the title for.

So anyway...

I changed Jennifer's recipe only slightly, switching oat bran for the breadcrumbs, to boost fiber. It worked perfectly.

I placed my burger on a toasted whole grain sprouted bun, and topped it with slices of avocado and spinach. I served it with a side of peppery, oven-roasted broccoli florets. The verdict? Let's just say, if every vegetarian meal I make is this good, September will be a good month.