The culinary school I went to focused on very classical French techniques (something like a lentil pasta sauce would be unheard of in the classical textbooks). Before dawn, the Baking students would get started on all-butter croissants.

At the same time, the students running the school’s restaurant would be roasting veal bones for stock. An hour later, the Breakfast & Pantry class would come in and begin making veggie quiche and bacon in the oven.

The Pastry students came in later and would go to the storeroom refrigerator to retrieve an ungodly amount of butter for their tasks that day. The rhythm of the school was the same, day after day, year after year.

And in the middle of all of the beef bones, sockeye salmon and eggshells, was a chef instructor who ate a vegan, raw food diet. Well, he ate that diet at home.

His job made it impossible to eat that way while he was instructing, as he had to taste all of his student’s work. But yeah, in his free time, he was a vegan.

Because of him, the students learned at least one vegan dish in those school kitchens that were usually full of roasted chicken and poached eggs.

He taught some classes how to make savory oatmeal for dinner. On my rotation, the assignment was a vegetable lasagna recipe and vegan lentil curry.

The post Vegan Lentil Curry (Lentil Vegetable Curry) appeared first on Foxes Love Lemons.

Oh look, it’s Meatless Monday again! I’m a big fan of meatless meals in general, and try to eat them at least once a week.

While I’m generally pretty satisfied with a coconut risotto, kale risotto, oatmeal for dinner or butternut squash noodles, all of these meals have to pass the “satisfied the rest of the evening test.”

This Mushroom & Lentil Ragu certainly did.

A sure sign that a meatless meal did not have enough substance? A few hours after dinner, Jeff sneaks off to the kitchen and returns with a handful of peanuts.

And then does it again. And then maybe sees if he can scrounge up some pimento cheese dip from the fridge. Usually by this point, my stomach is rumbling too, so I grab my own cheese and crackers.

That’s when I’ve realized that my vegetarian dinner clearly didn’t have enough substance to get us through until breakfast the next morning.

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Our basement flooded a few weeks ago. It was annoying and gross in all the ways those things are, but luckily we had already known our basement was a flood risk, so we don’t keep much down there. And what we do is all up high, off the ground.

The one exception, for some reason, was my Instant Pot. When we ran to the basement after we realized how heavy the rain was, I saw the Instant Pot sitting on the ground, and water creeping toward it.

At the last minute, I ran through the flood, scooped it up and rescued it.

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If I’m being honest, I should have just named this salad “Lori’s Favorite Foods Salad.” Because that’s exactly what it is, including the beets.

Side note: Last week, I asked my followers on Facebook about their least favorite foods, and somebody said beets! I was basically like “um, beets are my favorite food!”

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The post Lentil & Roasted Beet Salad with Maple-Tahini Dressing appeared first on Foxes Love Lemons.

Home cooks across Michigan love the great apples available in our state, perfect for cooking or eating on their own. Today, I’m excited to be guest posting for the Michigan Apples blog, sharing a recipe featuring Gala apples (my favorite variety!).

I’ve been completely obsessed with Middle Eastern flavors for some time now. I find it to be the best cuisine for making healthy, fresh (and often vegetarian) ingredients taste incredibly vibrant and satisfying.

I love it so much that I actually found myself eating a bigger dinner the day after Thanksgiving (where we ordered Lebanese carryout for a Friendsgiving get-together) than I did for Thanksgiving dinner. Go figure.

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The post Warm Sautéed Apple & Lentil Salad appeared first on Foxes Love Lemons.

Did you know that near the top of the homepage of this blog, you can see which five of my recipes are currently trending? This little widget automatically updates to display the recipes that have gotten the most clicks in the past seven days.

As I’m writing this, four of those five spots are occupied by crockpot soups and slow cooker beef stroganoff (and the fifth is a stovetop shrimp wonton soup). Turns out, everybody loves slow cookin’ and everybody loves soup, and why not? It’s an awesome, low-mess, less-time way to get a meal on the table!

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I have an impossible time deciding my favorite dish at Thanksgiving. It’s either stuffing (which I always call stuffing, no matter if it never sees the inside of the turkey) or mashed potatoes and gravy. I think I give the slight edge to stuffing, but it’s like 51% stuffing 49% mashed potatoes.

I’ve always had dreams of a Thanksgiving dinner where I could make like two or three types of stuffing – one traditional version, one cornbread variety, and maybe one other.

But, since my Thanksgiving dinner is just for six people, a second or third type of stuffing would add even MORE leftovers to the massive amount of leftovers we already end up with.

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For a short time during culinary school, I had a part-time job at the “gourmet prepared foods” counter of a local grocery store. It was the type of place that charged $19.99/pound for cooked chicken breasts sprinkled with spices.

Insane, I know. The two most popular items were mini turkey meatloaves and lentil burritos. Which mean that all day long, my shift basically involved people leaning over the counter and asking “Ya guys got any lentil burritos?”.

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While it seems like all I’ve posted for the last month is chicken recipes, I actually try to eat vegetarian dinners at least one or two nights a week. It’s healthy and cheap – the double whammy.

Lentils, beans and eggs are huge staples for these vegetarian nights.

The best lentil dish I’ve ever tasted is “Lentils Like Baked Beans” from The Art of Living According to Joe Beef: A Cookbook of Sorts, a souvenir I brought back from Montreal last summer.

Eating at Joe Beef was an experience – we ate so many unique and delicious things, including eel nuggets, a sweetbread and lobster dish, and a dessert that was supposed to look like a baked potato but was really a combination of crunchy meringue and melted chocolate.

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