Lentil burgers and the last of the potatoes

I told you, you would see those lentils again.  For the lentil burgers I just added the lentils from last night, some eggs and the last tiny bit of grape nuts cereal, about 6 crackers, and a lot of oats to the mixer and let it mash it all up a bit.  Then I made some patties and coated them in a mixture of flour, salt and pepper.  I baked them in the oven at 350 until fairly firm and crispy on the outside after coating the cookie sheet in oil.
The boy made the side of rosemary roasted potatoes.  I just didn't feel like trying something new and fixing the chayote.  I can be boring that way.
I used the butter lettuce for my "bun"and put mayonnaise on the patty itself with some sliced tomato. Everyone else went for some bread.

I will admit that I only ate about 2 of those peices of potatoes because that lentil patty was very filling.  The girl, otherwise known as the bottomless pit, actually filled up and not only avoided a 2nd and 3rd helpings of food but didn't finish her burger.  She said she liked it and packed one for lunch.  I am glad she liked it, cause I made 15 of them.  8 were frozen to be consumed next week by the boy, while the rest of us are out of town. 

Tomorrow, I am going to ignore my menu plan and have a leftovers night.  We have lots of lettuce, 2 lentil patties, a couple servings of lentil stew as well,  a couple servings of potato leek soup, some rosemary roasted carrots, lots of rosemary roasted potatoes and a sweet potato to eat up.  I baked the potato this evening cause it was looking a bit iffy, so I cut off the iffy part and baked the rest.
We also have lots of muffins in the house.
I figure the spaghetti sauce can wait until Friday.  And that should use up the bell pepper and tomatoes nicely.  I did break down and buy some onion just for the sauce.  It was real onion or the dried stuff.

The Meal Designed for Leftovers

 Tonight was lentil stew and acorn squash.  Both were made with plans for the leftovers for future meals.
The lentil stew was just 2 lbs lentils, a chopped bell pepper, a chopped giant carrot, a heaping spoonful of pre-minced garlic, a 14 oz can of diced tomatoes and a 28 oz can of tomato sauce, the last of my dried minced onion, and water.  It went in the crock pot and water was again added later in the day as well as some salt and pepper to taste.

All 5 of the acorn squash went in the oven.  I just cut them in half and scooped out the seeds and cooked them face down in 9x13" baking dishes with an inch of water for about 40 min until the fork  would easily pierce the skin.  I then cut the 2 halves in half and sprinkled those with cinnamon and drizzled with a bit of honey for each of us for our dinner.  The rest of the squash was pureed and made into muffins and bread (5.5 cups of puree made 18 muffins and 2 loaves of bread, but the husband thinks he might have done better to have stretched it to more cause they are very moist).  Think pumpkin walnut muffin, with acorn squash puree instead.  These will be breakfast and desserts for days, maybe even weeks to come.  I think the loaves will be frozen.   

The lentils will be used tomorrow as an ingredient in another dish.  You will be seeing them again.

Reworked Leftovers - Stuffed Bell Pepper Edition

Last night's lentil stew was mixed with equal parts brown rice and stuffed into bell pepper halves and topped with tomato sauce and baked at 350 degrees until the peppers were nice and tender, which was nearly an hour.
For a side we cut up 2 apples, a pear some strawberries and tossed with some blueberries and the juice of half a lemon and called it fruit salad.

There is lots leftover for lunches.  I will confess to having two peppers (BTW, that is a salad plate you are seeing, so while a large pepper, we are not talking something too huge).  I had a larger breakfast that usual and missed lunch, and was starving by dinner, which ended up late.

In other news I finally made it to the gym for the first time in two months.  I got my release from the doctor yesterday and couldn't wait to get back to some activity.   I met up with a friend and we spent a full hour in the pool.  Not swimming, but walking.  I am working up to my activities again after all.

I also weighed myself since I was at the gym and access to a scale.  I continued to loose some weight and am down a whole 27.5 lbs.  About 8.5 since my surgery in early December.  Which means that while I have lost an average of half a pound a week since joining the gym, I have been loosing a bit more than a pound a week since I went dairy free.  My weight loss did pick up after going vegetarian, but not as much as it has since going diary free as well.  Of course that 27.5, does include the fibroid that was removed, which does skew the half a pound a week average.  I think before going vegetarian, I was only loosing a pound a month.

I would like to keep my weight loss average at about one pound a week.  With the gym I want to ton, build my stamina back up and get myself active again.  I think it would be nice to take up running again.  That would be much easier on my knees if I weighed just a bit less.  And I think some other activities would be fun too.

Lentil Stew for a crazy day

Today was a lentil stew cooked up in the crock pot.  I am so glad that I had a crock pot dish planned too.  It wasn't supposed to have been such a busy day, car troubles threw a wrench in everything.  I ended up having to give the husband a ride to work at the last moment and then take his car in for repairs, that took up most of the day, before hurrying on to my scheduled doctor's appointment.  Fortunately the crockpot was already started before everything went kapoot.
 We had lentil stew over brown rice with a side of fruit.  I had a pear.

Lentil Stew

1 lb bag of lentils
1 can diced tomatoes
2 carrots sliced
2 stalks of celery sliced
1 onion chopped
1 heaping spoonful of minced garlic
half a bell pepper chopped
enough water
salt and pepper
1 vegan Italian sausage sliced (added one hour before serving)
All ingredients except sausage was dumped in crock pot and cooked on low for the day.  Water was added as needed.

Served it over some brown rice I had leftover, because I could and it was one less thing to cook on busy day.  And the side was whatever each person grabbed to go with it.  I had a pear.