When the cat's away, the mice will play.

Or, in this case, when the husband is away the wife experiments in the kitchen. I say "experiments" as if I don't know how the dishes will turn out. Quite the contrary, I know exactly how the dishes will turn out. Delicious. If you like these sorts of things, anyway. First up: Honey Baked Lentils. (recipe can be found here http://www.recipezaar.com/Honey-Baked-Lentils-58598 ). Neall would not eat this happily. He might eat it. If he was hungry. Very hungry. Starving really. Since he won't be home tonight until midnight, this is on the menu. I'll do something I've never done before too. Photo blog the event. Yep. Since I have to make rice anyway, I'm also making Coconut Milk Rice Pudding. (recipe can be found here http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=6287.0 ). Neall probably wouldn't eat this either. He would eat it, but he wouldn't ENJOY it, and I'll be danged if I am wasting a precious can of coco-nutty deliciousness on him.

So, step one of both dishes is rice. If I had a rice cooker this would be a no-brainer but I don't. I have a phobia of cooking rice on the stove so I do it in the microwave. I love doing this particularly when the microwave is a disgusting mess. You can't NOT clean the microwave after cooking rice.



While the rice is cooking I've started the lentils. That stove was in this house when we moved in. I agreed to keep it only until it died. I figured that would be months, maybe a year. Here we are many years (and children) later, the gas company has given it a clean bill of health repeatedly, and it's still going. I have to light the damn thing with a lighter, but other than that it works swimmingly. Deep down I consider this a blessing.



I've just started the lentils simmering and am going to deviate from the recipe a bit. A reviewer recommended not boiling the lentils as long for a firmer texture. I hate soggy, squishy lentils (unless they are pureed in soup) so I am going to try her advice. 15 minutes and we'll be on our way.

"Dry" ingredients mixed. I substituted a mustard pepper blend. It was all I had in the way of dry mustard. I may or may not have added more than the prescribed onions. I also paid no attention to the honey measurements. It'll be good, trust me. Into the oven it goes.






While that was going on I wiped about a dozen snotty noses, washed my hands a bakers dozen times, licked my honey fingers and the rice finished cooking. As expected the microwave is a mess now with sticky rice-water. Now I HAVE to clean it. No procrastination opportunity.



Now for the rice pudding. That won't make it until dessert. I can tell you that right now. It'll be afternoon snack for anyone who wants some. That'll only be me. These kids are weird. I may or may not eat all of it.



And just like that it is done. That wasn't even the magic of the internet. It was that fast and that easy. This may become a winter staple. Rice and coconut milk can be bought in bulk and kept indefinitely. By far the hardest part of the dish was making the rice. With a rice cooker this would be cheap, easy, and fast. This would be to-die-for for breakfast with bananas or raisins.



The baking lentils smell DIVINE. The kids came sniffing. They may surprise me and eat it. I'm not sure how I feel about that.