Lentil Bolognese

You will want to add this lentil bolognese to your meal plan – perfect for meatless Monday!

I can’t remember the last time I made an English muffin sammie for breakfast!  My store had English muffins on sale for .89 cents a package, so I couldn’t pass that up.  Mine had egg white, baby spinach, a slice of deli roast beef and Cabot alpine cheddar cheese.

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The work morning dragged along, and it was time to test my blood sugar before working out.  Damn. It was 139.  So I ate a small fruit cup that I had in the fridge – it had 20 grams of sugar, yet only 60 calories and I thought that would do the trick.  Nope.  Twenty minutes later I was still 139.  WTF?!  So I ate my fruit that I was going to have as an afternoon snack – watermelon, honeydew melon and cantaloupe.  Twenty minutes later I was up to 179, and figured that was going to have to be enough.  I didn’t want to eat more food to work out, kind of defeats the purpose of working out!

On tap was back exercises, and then I finished with a 2 mile walk.

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My step daughter-in-law is having a birthday in a couple weeks.  Instead of asking for presents, she asked if her friends and family would go vegan with her for 30 days, starting the day after her birthday, and ending right before Thanksgiving.  While I would love to join that challenge, it’s just not going to happen.  First off, I don’t think I could get Tony to eat anything vegan, and secondly, I would be going through cheese withdrawal by day 2!

But I did tell her that I would commit to at least one vegan recipe a week to show my support to her.  When I was cleaning out my pantry over the weekend, I realized I had two packages of green lentils.  So I decided on a lentil Bolognese, subbing the lentils for the beef.  So I look on the package to see how to cook it.  Put the whole package of lentils in 8 cups of water . . . huh.  That seemed like a lot of water, but what do I know.  I ended up boiling the lentils for 30 minutes, until they were tender, only to realize that the instructions I was reading was for lentil soup!  Hence the 8 cups of water.  No worries, they turned out fine.

this is a pot of lentil bolognese

Lentil Bolognese

Yield: 8 half cup servings
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 35 minutes

This hearty sauce is not only healthy, but delicious!

Ingredients

  • 1 teaspoon olive oil
  • 1 cup chopped carrots
  • 1/2 cup chopped celery
  • 1 cup chopped red pepper
  • 2 cloves of minced garlic
  • 2 cups vegetable broth
  • 2 cups cooked lentils
  • 28 ounce can tomato puree
  • 1 tablespoon Italian seasoning
  • 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
  • 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
  • salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

  1. Heat olive oil in a stock pot. Add the carrots, celery, red pepper and garlic. Cook for 5 minutes. Add remaining ingredients and simmer for 25 minutes.

Did you make this recipe?

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If you have members of your family that would see the lentil and think “no fucking way I am going to eat that” just puree the whole mixture – they’ll never know!  And hopefully that wasn’t your five year old swearing like a truck driver.

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Okay, so I had to add a bit of mozzarella cheese to the top of mine, so it’s not 100% vegan, but I believe the recipe for the Bolognese is!  When I got to my desk I mixed it all together – the perfect bite!

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I put the picture of my lunch on Instagram, not only did my daughter-in-law like the picture (and Natalie!) but so did Sunny Anderson!  You know, we are pretty much BFFs!

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Tony didn’t have an appetite again for dinner, so more Biz food!  When in doubt – make tacos!  I made mine in blue corn tortillas with ground beef and spinach, with some cheezy chips on the side.  Made in less than 10 minutes!

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And I got my steps in – just barely, but I did!

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Tony now gets blood tests once a week and the results are reported to the Mayo Clinic, and they adjust his medications accordingly.  Well I was at my desk when my cell phone rang, and the nurse was telling me that she was trying to contact Tony but there was no answer at home.  She said “I really need to get a hold of him.”  Holy crap.  So I called the house phone – just rang and rang.  I ended up calling his cell phone and he answered “What?!!”  He was talking to his son and he said the phone kept ringing and ringing.  He sounded pissed and I was just trying to tell him that Mayo was trying to get a hold of him.  You can tell when I write that Tony doesn’t have an appetite that he’s not feeling well.  Since basically Saturday he’s felt like crap.  Well, his numbers are a bit off, and they took him off one medication completely because it was causing his kidneys not to work right.

Well, I was just happy that weren’t going to tell us “go straight to the hospital” like they did before.  But with that stress, my work life sucking ass lately, I just lost it when I got home.  You know, sometimes it’s just good to get a cry out and move on!  Tony just held me and said “I’ve got you.”   That’s all I needed.

Alright, time to get this show on the road – I made breakfast cookies this morning – my twin sister had been trying to come up with a copycat recipe for Baker’s Breakfast Cookies for a couple weeks now.  I’ll let you know tomorrow if they turned out!  Make it a great day!

p.s.  if you wanted to add a meat protein to your bolognese, check out my chicken bolognese.  Would you prefer this lentil bolognese?