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The second new dish I made last week I made for our weekly potluck - Lentil Loaf. I baked it for just under an hour and it was perfect. Instead of French style green beans, I chopped up 2/3 cup of green wax beans, covered them with water in a glass dish, and microwaved them for 2 minutes. This was a yummy, yummy dish! I served it with gravy. Who doesn’t like gravy?

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups dried lentils
• 2 cups water
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 cups grated cheddar cheese
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2/3 cup French style green beans
• 1 cup plain breadcrumbs
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• salt & freshly ground black pepper
• butter, for coating
• breadcrumbs, for coating

Directions

1. Grease a loaf pan with butter and generously coat with breadcrumbs.

2. Put the lentils, water and bay leaf into a medium saucepan, cover tightly and simmer until water is absorbed and the lentils are tender.

3. Remove from heat and discard the bay leaf.

4. Preheat oven to 375°F.

5. Add the cheese, onion, green beans, breadcrumbs, lemon juice and egg to the lentils; mix well.

6. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

7. Spoon mixture into loaf pan and smooth the top.

8. Bake, uncovered for 1-1 1/2 hours until firm and nicely browned on top.

Last week, I tried two new recipes for vegetarian dinners.

First, I made chickpea curry.

It was yummy! I can’t remember where I got it, but here’s the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1 can chick peas
• 2 onions
• 1/2 green pepper
• 3 stalks celery
• 2 carrots
• 1 tbsp chili powder
• ginger
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1/2 tsp mustard powder or 1 tsp mustard
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tomatoes
• salt to taste

Instructions:

• Peel and cut onion. Cut ginger into small pieces. Cut green pepper, celery, and carrots into small pieces. Saute over medium heat in a frying pan with olive oil with cumin.
• Add tomato, cook 5 minutes.
• Add chickpeas, 2 tbsp water, cinnamon, and turmeric. Stir and cook for 5 minutes.
• Serve over rice or potatoes.

It was very good! I actually used half the cumin and turmeric because I was afraid of them, but it definitely needs the full amounts to have the right taste! I also totally forgot the chili powder, so it wasn’t nearly spicy enough!

I can’t believe my baby girl is only one short month away from turning one.

When did this happen?

I love paper! from Kim Schell on Vimeo.

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Yesterday, we went to my parents’ house for a BBQ for Mother’s Day.

I think Gwen’s favourite part was playing with all my mom’s metal cook/bakeware. Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Mommy,

Thank you for being my mommy.

Thank you for giving me so much of your time when you often have none for you.

Thank you for holding me close, telling me you love me and giving me endless comfort when I need it.

I love being close to you. I love playing with you. I love it when you read to me and show me the world around us. I love it when you sing to me or play music and dance around the room with me. I love how safe I feel when I am with you.

You are as tall as the ceiling, as big as the world, as important as God. Thank you for being my mommy. You are the best mommy in the Universe to me.

Love,

your little one.

Brought tears to my eyes. Reprinted from here.

My local healthfood store has a sign up reminding patrons that it’s Fair Trade Month. More specifically, this Saturday, May 9, is World Fair Trade Day.

So I ask my readers - do you pay attention to fair trade labels?

Which products do you buy fair trade? Why?

For us, I buy bananas, cocoa/chocolate, and sugar exclusively fair trade because they’re all cash crops that ensure that developing countries stay just that - developing. Each of these products use up the resources of the country to provide for our western way of life while those resources could easily be used to provide nutritious food for the inhabitants. Sadly, our trade system has exploited developing countries to the point that they rely basically on the cash derived from selling all their resources to developed countries and have to import most of their food. If I drank coffee, that would be another one on my list.

(p.s. Does anyone else think the words ‘fair’ and ‘trade’ look funny when you’ve read them that many times?)

… that in this post, I said that I was planning on using a baby carrier for the first few weeks.

Here we are - Gwen’s almost 11 months old and I can count on one hand the number of times we’ve had her in the stroller. I love wearing my baby!

Crystle lent me the book Diet For a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe. What an eye-opening book for sure! It discusses how many of our food resources are wasted in feed for our animals - especially beef.

After reading it, I’ve decided to challenge myself to make meat dishes only twice per week for the summer. This is a HUGE switch for us, as we currently eat a vegetarian meal maybe once or twice per week.

Really though, when it takes 2500 gallons of water to make just one pound of beef, and 7 pounds of grain (Lappe), does it make sense to comsume beef many times per week? Chicken is slightly less of an energy consumer, but still, compared to grain and vegetable sources of protein, it just doesn’t make sense (from the perspective of the planet anyways) to rely on animal sources of protein when plant sources are much more readily available and abundant.

Wish me luck on my new adventure!

Pardon my non-existant blogging over the past week … we’ve been crazy busy here!

Brad’s been working insane hours getting ready for a launch at work, and we hosted his brother, Dave, and his girlfriend, Lindsey, Thursday and Friday and a bit of Saturday! I had a great time hanging out with them and at the end of the visit, we couldn’t decide who was entertaining who: was Gwen entertaining them or were they entertaining her?

My iBook has pretty well gone CAPUT!, so I haven’t any uploaded pictures to show you all. Oh, they’re on my iBook, but it takes about 10 minutes for a webpage to even show up! In light of this recent laptop activity, Brad and I are heading to Future Shop tonight to pick me up one of these.

Um, I’m excited. Like, really excited.

EEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!