Lentil and Arugula Salad with Turmeric Yogurt and Avocado

Well, I Intended to make this on Monday for an appropriately named “Meatless Monday” dish, but well, I did not. I have been working on another children’s book project and I have been grinding away, painting and drawing and tapping into my best rhyming game. I made it on a Wednesday, on a day where I knew I had to truly enjoy my food to eat it, and it didn’t disappoint. Unfortunately, I have been having intermittent internet issues in my house, so I am writing this and hoping to post it on a whisper and a prayer.

Over the weekend I learned, via Zoom, how to breakdown a chicken and learned a bunch of things I will post about when I post the “Chicken, herbs and orange salad lettuce wraps” recipe tomorrow, but what I have to say is, I feel very guilt free over this recipe. Profoundly guilt free I will be, until perhaps I see a special documentary on television where they have done science experiments where they have actually heard lentils crying as they’re being harvested…For the sake of my healthy calorie intake, I hope this documentary takes a while to come to prime time.

This recipe tasted very crisp and clean (even though it has some dairy), and I love how easy it would be to add other ingredients depending on what you have in your refrigerator or pantry. Greek yogurt, for people who don’t cook with it, is honestly some kinda protein packed revelation and I gravitate always towards the tang of all things tangy, rejoicing in their tanginess. This recipe had been in my inbox for a while and I am so glad I tried it. Word to the wise - cooking lentils can be tricky, and mine are certainly aggressively al dente but having made lentil soup, I know the window between when lentils are done and they are DONE, is fleeting so I rinsed them at exactly al dente. I added some Mexican Chili powder to my lentils after cooking because I thought they needed something more and it actually worked very well with the turmeric yogurt. I added too much lemon juice to the arugula because I was hungry when I was cooking this and I tend not to measure when I am hungrier than I should be (…yet another reason not to make dinner at 9:00 at night)….I had the lentils the next day in a what somebody named “Puerto Rican” egg scramble with cheese because of its use of Puerto Rican spices, and it was satisfying, as well as a departure from my stand-by protein packed grain for scrambles, quinoa cooked in chicken stock. I am listing the original recipe’s proportions but I cut down on the amount of yogurt and arugula because I know how much I can eat, and I have other plans for the rest of the container for the plain Greek yogurt. I’m on a budget y’all and Greek yogurt can do so many things .. I might need some onion dip or yogurt sauce or even a tangy garlic yogurt aioli…the world is my “on a budget” oyster….

Ingredients

1.5 cup of lentils (green if you can find them)

2 cloves of garlic, cleaned and diced

tsp of turmeric

1.33 cup of plain Greek yogurt

Salt (to cook the lentils and to add to the yogurt)

tsp of powdered Garlic

cup of Arugula

medium very ripe avocado

tsp of lemon juice

optional ***tsp of Mexican chili powder

0.5 tsp of ground pepper

Plan of Attack

Boil your pot of salted water and add the lentils. Cook for 25-30 minutes, or until the lentils are tender, but still retain their shape. While the lentils are cooking mix the turmeric, yogurt, 0.5 tsp of both salt and pepper, sprinkling of powdered garlic and finely diced garlic

Drain the lentils, rinse, and cool. Add the lentils to your medium mixing bowl, and add the arugula, and lemon juice. Serve over a bed of Yogurt with slices of ripe avocado.