Category Archives: weight loss

Gochujang Lentilballs

(yes, you can use meat in these instead, they are really good either way!)

A little sweet, a little spicy, and a lot tasty! Blends well with the lentil base blogged about earlier.

Peas, rice, and lentilballs. It’s what’s for dinner!

Lentil Ball Base

5 minced scallions

¼ each mirin and gochujang (your local Korean market will have a wide variety of flavors. I like the one for pork best for this, but they have a lot of them)
1/8 cup soy sauce

2 tsp minced garlic

1 thumb sized piece of ginger, peeled and minced

Extra bread crumbs if it’s really loose

Pre mixing

Mix all together, form into golf sized balls, spray with oil, and bake at 350F for about 30 minutes,

Gochujang Lentilballs literally chilling out…


About 25 minutes in, you can sprinkle them with sesame seeds.

Let me know what you think if you make them!

Lentil Ball Base

One thing we eat a ton of are pulses. Pulses are the best- high protein, high fiber, low fat, cheap and taste good. The perfect food, for us.

We have a little too many dry lentils in the pantry, so I played around with them and came up with a lentil base for ‘meatballs’. Take this base and add your favorite meatball add-ins to it, and enjoy!

It’s simple, hands-off, and easy. We use it a lot, because the leftovers are an asked for lunch – they go great in wraps.

Lentil Ball Base:

Serves four for dinner

1 cup dry lentils (about ½ a pound)

2+ cups water

1 tsp minced garlic

1 tsp salt

½ tsp black pepper

1 chopped carrot

Put all ingredients in a pot and simmer covered about 30 minutes. Add water during cooking if they threaten to dry out.

this is all it is. Plus water

Strain them when they are done and allow to cool.

Done. You can mush the lentils on the side of the pot with a spoon.

Add

About ½ cup bread crumbs (you want the mix to stick together, so add ins can be gooey)

with bread crumbs mixed in

Whatever flavors you want

Form into balls I get 24-28 golf ball sized ones.

Bake at 350F sprayed with oil for about 30 minutes, turning once.

After they are baked, they can be reheated slowly in a sauce *gently* without falling apart.

That’s it.

Cheap, healthy, vegan, free of most allergens, and infinitely adaptable.

Make Your Own Beans or Ful Medames

This morning I stepped on the scale and the number had gone up instead of down or staying in place. I had had nothing planned for dinner tonight (late on menu planning) so I have decided to make what our son lovingly called ‘make your own beans’ when he was a toddler. It’s basically an ancient recipe and possibly one if the oldest street foods, so I have been told. All it is is beans, cooked, served with seasonings- traditionally salt, olive oil, garlic and pepper.

Variations include cooking eggs in their shells with the beans and adding onion skins or coffee to the cooking liquor. We’ve decided that coffee makes the best ful for us, so that’s what I now use. 🙂 I also prefer darker beans for this recipe, as it’s dependent on the beans for flavor.

So I am going to start with three cups of these dark red beans (about a pound) in the pressure cooker. This would feed four people, if they like beans.

Then I nestle six eggs in the beans.

And then I add about a cup of brewed coffee and a quart of water. If I were using anything other than my Instant Pot, I would add more water and watch it more. I have made this in the slow cooker, on the range and in the oven. I have not yet tried it in the ashes of a campfire, but I really want to. 🙂

And that is it. Cool until the beans are done. I have all day and the pot will take under an hour. Other cooking versions take different times. The next step will come at serving, so by the magic of the internet…

Here are the beans, done and able to be crushed by the back of a spoon.

They will sit like that until serving time. Which is now. 🙂 We have sourdough bread, salt, oil, pepper and fresh garlic.

You can mash it together and serve like hummus. Make it into a wrap. Serve as a side dish. Skip the egg. Add tomato, chili, parsley, any seasoning you want. It’s a simple, healthy, filling meal that should be on rotation in any home that loves pulses.