Mung Bean Noodles & Peanut Sauce

Have you ever tried "mung bean noodles" before? They're good. Hugely long and awkward to get onto the plate, but delicious and a nice change from rice or rice noodles for a peanut dish, if you're not eating wheat :-). Tonight's dinner was a heaping plateful of these wheat-free noodles, with a thick vegetable sauce full of peanut butter. The noodles cook very quickly, soaking for 7 minutes then boiling for three, and you can put the sauce on top of anything so I won't go into detail about the noodles. If you put them to soak in some water before you start the sauce, they should finish up at about the same time.

Peanut Sauce:
1 egg
water
5 tbsp peanut butter (more?)
3.4 cup salad mix (w/carrot, cabbage, romaine, etc)
handful of raisins
handful of sliced mushrooms
honey
garlic powder
black pepper
salt

Boil a small amount of water in a saucepan, about 1 inch. In a frying pan, put the salad mix, mushrooms, raisins, and honey. Mix them together on medium heat, stirring in some water and peanut butter. When the water in the saucepan is roaring, crack a raw egg into it and stir it around. Let it cook most of the way, then dump that water and the egg into the frying pan with the peanut butter. The water should mix with the peanut butter and make a lighter-colored sauce. Stirring it a lot will keep the peanut oil from separating out (if it does happen, give it a stir!). If the peanut butter starts getting dark or too thick, add more water. Cover, and let it sit on low heat til it seems like the mushrooms are soft and the peanut butter is thoroughly mixed with everything (probably less than ten minutes). Add the spices and some salt to taste, and serve over the noodles!

Travis' rating: Texture of the noodles was weird/mushy, sauce was good. 100.


:-)

Yellow Lentils!

This dinner was wheat/gluten-free, one for you, Susan!
A few days ago, I had pressure-cooked some lentils with a little garlic powder and spices -- I think I used cumin and black pepper. The pressure cooker is amazing for dried beans. The split yellow lentils cooked in 8 minutes (probably could have been less, but I didn't want to risk it). A 4:1 ratio of water to lentils is good, and won't burn even if you cook them a little too long. If you're not using a pressure-cooker, dried lentils will take about 30 minutes to cook. I like this website http://www.beanslentils.com/preparelentils.htm for making a good time estimate.

Lentils:
3/4 cup split yellow lentils, dry
approx. 4 cups water
2 tbsp tomato soup concentrate
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp garlic powder

For tonight's dinner, we had rice with a lentil-based sauce on top. While the rice is cooking (about 15 minutes, 2:1 ratio of water to rice), I drained most of the water from the lentils and mixed them up with some other things to make the sauce.

Lentil Sauce:
1 cup prepared lentils (a little less than half of the lentils from above)
1 apple, diced
handful of raisins
sprinkle of Cajun spice (or something else spicy?)
sprinkle of Italian spice (or a little basil?)
broccoli -- 3 or 4 "trees"
leftover rice -- not necessary, but we had some in the fridge. it gets served with rice, anyways, so the extra was no harm/no foul

I cooked all that on a low heat for about 15 minutes, all the time that it took the rice to cook. Obviously, the spices and other additions to the lentils can be whatever suits your fancy. I am vegetarian, but Travis ate his portion with pieces of pork and a chopped up hot dog...

Rating: "I don't think I like lentils very much. I'm not a good judge, I'll eat anything! Everything is good that I don't make..." haha