Sunday, April 14, 2013

Horray for Lentils!

I am three years into eating animal products and five days into a one-week vegan cleanse.  Having cycled through numerous variations of vegetarianism, veganism and pescetarianism over the past four decades - those four decades punctuated occasionally by relatively short-lived flirtations with more serious animal products - usually around Thanksgiving - it is worthy to note that over the past three years - while I experimented with the dietary guidelines of the Weston A. Price Foundation - I gave serious animal products - such as grass-fed beef, lamb, pheasant, duck, chicken liver pate, beef heart, beef liver, home grown chicken eggs, turkey eggs, raw milk, raw milk cheese, kefir, even occasional pork sausage and bacon - a long-term whirl for the first time since I was 18 years old.

Having grown a personal chef business based upon my expertise in vegetarian cuisine - I had a lot of new skill sets to acquire in short order - and I found that I relied on Julia Child and Sally Fallon almost exclusively.

As I return to my vegetarian culinary roots this week - I find myself most surprised by the level of commitment required to really pull this off.  It takes a lot of TLC to create lovingly prepared plant based meals.  In fact, one could easily become food-obsessed - and almost by necessity-  to really thrive on this life-style/food style.

While I wait for my black beans to sprout - day four and they are still look rather unpromising - I re-sprouted another batch of lentils.  I am very thankful for the lowly lentil - and repent of my former criticism of lentils as boring to look at and eat - as lentils have provided me with near miraculous fast food - on this slow food journey.

Today for lunch I had lightly steamed lentil sprouts, and sprouted steamed quinoa topped with burdock pickle, kale salad, avocado slices and nori strips.

Hooray for lentils!

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