All is Full of Lentils

After this post, a few friends were wondering what happened to all of my prep work. It was pretty, but did it work? Well here's how it fared:

• For several work lunches, I filled a bowl half full with lentils, nestled a puck of caramelized onions in the center, and topped it with chunks of the roasted butternut squash. I carried along a small contained of my raisin vinaigrette to toss with everything after I heated it at work.
• Later in the week, I seared a large batch of kale which I also added to the lentils, squash, and vinaigrette.
• I pureed the last of the cauliflower and it's water with the last of the carrots and squash, some apples, broth, and cayenne pepper for a creamy soup.
• I NEVER USED THE BRAISED MUSHROOMS WHAT. They looked delicious but I just never wrapped my brain around incorporating them into things, and now they are floating eerily in the back of the fridge like a jar of eyeballs and I am scared to even open them.

The Ginger peeling ginger.

The week after, I added a couple more elements to my repertoire: roasted chicken thighs, poached balsamic fig sauce, brown rice, and a lot more seared kale (it gets so nutty and keeps so well- yum). I mixed and matched them for work all week but it didn't get old because that fig sauce is so darn good. I also made one of my favorite recipes from The Kitchn, warm chickpea salad. A little container of that broke up any monotony that may have lurked. Tomorrow I have some poached salmon with my brown rice and seared kale that I had prepped yesterday.

Erik helped me peel and grate over two pounds of ginger root, which I have mixed with a little vodka in a 16 ounce mason jar in the fridge. It is so wonderful to just reach in and spoon a little out. I've mixed it with the rice, stirred it into salad dressing, and sauteed it with ginger and garlic as a base for many meals already. The time and effort were so worth it; I'm never going back.

Do I like the mass prep? Resounding YES. I will absolutely be keeping this up as much as I can. I have a couple of pumpkins, acorn squash, and some yams that I plan to roast for my next round. I should really be taking more pictures this time too.

And now some business talk. There has been an absence of posts for two reasons:

1. I have been struggling with a mild case of cooking burnout, partially remedied by...
2. An excessive amount of eating and ordering out.

Relating to the latter, Erik and I took a long weekend in Nashville for an early birthday present to him, and I took pictures of nearly everything we ate. That is a fairly picture-heavy post in the works, and it's going to hard to write unless I have a giant bowl of snacks next to me because that post will make me HUNGRY. 

Until then,

Lindsey