We had guests over the weekend, and while we cooked plant-based for them, and they seemed to enjoy eating it, which was cool, making them some awesome black bean burgers and the Barley, White Beans, Corn, and Sweet Pepper Salad and the black bean brownies out of the most-recent Forks Over Knives Summer 2018 magazine. We didn’t manage to make a bunch of stuff up for the week the way I like to do in advance. So yesterday I spent a banner day in the kitchen making up a huge batch of oil and sugar free granola for the week; a bunch of sweet potatoes, regular and Okinawan, to have around to eat; as well as dinner consisting of a home-made lentil loaf, mashed potatoes, and wild mushroom gravy with some ancient frozen lima beans on the side. Fortunately, there are plenty of leftovers for lunch today!
The prison loaf is out of this world. I’m not sure if it’s the French thyme that makes it so tasty, but it’s freaking addictive, tastes like stuffing, and I can’t stop eating it the stuff.
To make it, I used about 2 cups of pre-cooked lentils that I had on hand. I added about 1 1/2 cups of oats to that, as well as the flax binder, herbs and seasonings including garlic powder, and some onions. Combine all of this in a bowl until blended and then pour into a loaf pan and bake for about 35 minutes at 350F. That’s about all there is to it. To make the mushroom gravy, I just took a package of wild mushrooms and soaked them in boiling water per the instructions. Once they’re soft, chop them up, reserving the liquid to cook them in and to become the base for your gravy. Cooked the wild mushrooms with some more chopped up button mushrooms and voila, with a little cornstarch, salt and pepper, you’ve got a nice accompaniment for your prison loaf and potatoes.
For the granola, I tried something new: using a “flax-egg” as the binder, instead of any oil. I’d say it worked pretty good! I still managed to get some of the clumps that you want when making granola, and I didn’t use any oil, so that’s a good thing. To sweeten it a teensy bit I used about a teaspoon of some honey powder I picked up recently. To eat it now, it doesn’t read sweet, but with some blueberries, it’s just fine.
The sweet potatoes were just scrubbed and thrown in the oven for 75 minutes. Not much more to do to them. But now they’re available for bowls and just as a snack.
