Okay, so here’s what’s up: Jennifer got glutened (leading theory: crumbs accidentally transported in by a gluten eating acquaintance–oops!) and is not even quite back to barely functional. So…no posting for Jennifer. Well, couldn’t Ginny help her out, like she did last post? They have been working on recipes together, after all. Weeeeeell…turns out Ginny is glutened too, maybe from the same source, maybe not. So, no posting for Ginny. Well, logically that leaves me to cover this week. I’m happy to … but I did have my baby on Monday, so this post is late and you don’t get pictures (yet) because she’s only 5 days old and I haven’t had a chance to take pictures of the food … I just eat it :-).

This is an old, old, old standby. My mother apparently acquired this recipe from a natural food fair kinda place right after she and my father had decided to become vegetarians. It is a wonderful source of protein, easy to make, very tasty (I personally vastly prefer it to marinara sauce because it is much more flavorful and much more filling), and it freezes very well. Make a double or triple batch, eat what you want, then let it cool, put it in freezer ziplock bags, and freeze it. When you want to have it for dinner again, boil some pasta and thaw the sauce. You can thaw it in the fridge overnight (but who remembers to do that?), on the counter (if you remember in the morning), or in the microwave on defrost (if you remember 10 minutes before you want to eat).

Lentil Spaghetti Sauce

Ingredients:

• 2 tbs olive oil
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 cup fresh mushrooms, sliced
• 8 oz can tomato sauce
• 4 oz can tomato paste (sometimes you can only find 6 oz cans–if so, just use the whole thing, it’ll be fine)
• 2 ½ – 2 1/3 cups water
• ½ cup lentils, uncooked
• 1 ½ tsp crushed dried basil
• 1 tsp dry oregano
• dash of Truvia (about 1/4 tsp, or if sugar isn’t a problem, use 1 tsp white sugar. You can also omit entirely and it’ll still be good)
• 1 bay leaf
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Dice the onions, mince the garlic, and slice the mushrooms (you can use canned mushrooms in this if you want and it’ll make very little overall difference, since this cooks for quite a while overall). Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a skillet with a lid that fits and saute onions, garlic, and mushrooms until the onions are soft.

2. Add the remaining ingredients and bring the sauce to a gentle boil. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer over low heat for a bout 45 minutes, until the lentils are soft. Don’t let this boil too hard or it’ll thicken up too much (it really should be a simmer). You can add more water if you need to, though. Chewy lentils aren’t nice.

3. Make your pasta of choice (be that gluten free or otherwise :D) and serve topped with this sauce and your cheese of choice (generally Parmesan :D). As with traditional spaghetti, this dinner is good with a nice bread and salad. Enjoy!