lunch box: kale salad with spicy lentil-quinoa snacks

contents:

kale salad
spicy lentil-quinoa snacks
lemon ginger yogurt

This kale salad is a loose recreation of one I love from a health food store in Princeton. Usually I put tempeh in it, brown rice, or both, but I left it out this time because I figured I was protein covered already with the lentil-quinoa snacks. The kale absorbs dressing like crazy (maybe because its raw?), so if you're making a big tub to use over the course of the week you may want to add extra dressing at some point.

ingredients:

kale
carrot
red cabbage
flax seed
almonds
lemon juice
olive oil
tahini

Wash kale and cut or pull apart leaves with your hands into small salad like pieces. You are definitely going to want to remove the stalks and use only the leaves for this recipe since you wont be cooking it.

In a small bowl add one or two spoonfuls of tahini and equal parts water to make a paste. Then add a splash of olive oil and mix again until the tahini starts to thin out. If I had to guess I would say maybe a 1/4 cup of olive oil. Then add lemon juice to taste. I usually use about a half a lemon, depending on it's juiciness. This will make a very thick almost mayonnaise-like dressing.

In a large bowl pour your dressing over the kale and massage into the leaves with your hands. I'm not kidding, this is actually what people call it- massaging. If you have a wisecracking boyfriend at home, they will probably take this time to make a series of jokes about your kale being stressed. Also I'm going to admit something here, which is that I time most of my cooking to music instead of a watch. I think technically you're supposed to massage the kale for about 5 minutes or so until it wilts, but a medium length song is usually fine.

Add two or three grated carrots, red cabbage chopped finely, flax seeds, and almonds. I like to chop the almonds at least into halves to get them spread through the salad better, but that may be too picky for you. This is where you would add rice or tempeh if you're using it. Mix with your hands (why not? they are already covered in tahini dressing).

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I found this lentil snack recipe through JustBento.com and made it for the first time this past weekend. My process definitely needs some tweaking. The recipe called for bulgar wheat, but for some reason there wasn't a grocery store or bodega near me that had it, so I had to substitute with quinoa. I'm not sure if this is where the problem came from, but I ended up having to add more water after the lentils were done to make the quinoa cook in the same pot. The end result was delicious, but I think maybe a little too soft. I'm going to try this again either cooking the quinoa separately, or after I can get my hands on some bulgar (which for the record I didn't realize was so exotic), and report back to you.

Also a note about the cupcake paper system for storing yogurt: though adorable, it's not a good idea for anything wet. By lunchtime my precious little yogurt cup looked more like the Wicked Witch of the West- post water. For Tuesday's lunch I cut a plastic cup and used just the bottom for keeping yogurt in. Much better.

ingredients:

1 cup lentils
1/2 cup quinoa
3 tsp tomato paste
1 small onion
2 garlic cloves chopped
1 roasted red pepper (pre-made in jar)
chopped cilantro, cumin,curry powder, red pepper flakes, lemon juice

In a medium sized pot bring lentils and 2 /12 cups of water to a boil. Once boiling, cover and reduce heat to low. Simmer for 20-30 minutes until lentils are soft.

Add tomato paste and quinoa to pot. Now, the recipe says you can just let this sit for a half hour and if you were using bulgar it would absorb. I, with my usual inability to cook grains or beans correctly, had no excess water in the pot at this point and needed to add an extra cup and re-simmer the quinoa to get it to cook. Like I said, I'll get back to you on this one.

In a large frying pan saute onion and garlic until onion is clear. Add chopped red pepper and saute for a few more minutes. Add your quinoa lentil mixture to the frying pan and stir in spices, cilantro, and lemon juice. Remove from heat and let cool.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Now that your mixture is cool (you did let it cool, right?) roll into small golf sized balls and and place on a greased cookie sheet. Yes I'm making a stink about this cooling thing because, you guessed it- I was impatient and burned my fingers.

Bake for about 15 minutes until the balls get a thin crust to them.

The dressing is just plain yogurt with lemon juice and ginger powder.