I was going to include a picture, but a picture of a pot of lentils does not do justice to this dish.

Dice one spanish onion and the stems of a bunch of swiss chard, carmelize with 1 teaspoon of sugar and 2 tablespoons of neutral oil, such as grapeseed. After the onions and stems have browned, add one and a half cups lentils; I used half beluga and half split yellow lentils. Sweat the lentils for a few minutes, and add enough stock to cover, bring to a simmer. Add 2 teaspoons of salt, 1 box of frozen cooked winter squash and some tomato paste if desired.

While the lentils are cooking, heat a cast iron skillet and toast 1 tablespoon apiece of: yellow lentils, beluga lentils, cumin seed, coriander seed. add a teaspoon of yellow mustard seeds and a teaspoon of fenugreek seeds, 8 dried curry leaves, 4 dried red chiles and 2 bay leaves. toast the spices until almost black, then transfer to a spice grinder and add 1 teaspoon of turmeric. grind the spices, put 2 teaspoons into the lentils and save the rest to eat with eggs and sauteed vegetables.

I clean my spice grinder by grinding a small amount of white rice in it, I did this, and then added the ground rice to the lentils as well, to act as a thickener.

once the lentils are tender, about an hour, pour in a can of coconut milk, the leaves of the chard, and bring to a boil. simmer for 10 minutes or just take it off the heat and leave it covered for an hour.

eat them however you like, I had some with a fried egg and brown butter, and washed it down with a dogfish head brown ale.

we went to buttermilk channel last night, which is a fancy new restaurant on court st. the space is really nice and the food was great, I had cauliflower apple soup and a delicata squash tart and sarah had sweet potato ricotta croquettes and duck meatloaf with spinach. she thought meatloaf was just ok but I really liked mine quite a bit, plus they have kelso beer on tap which means we’ll be going back to try one for sure.

since I had pound and a half of cauliflower in the freezer and plenty of leftover stock, I figured I’d try my hand at replicating the soup I had, which was quite good but didn’t really have any apple flavor. I used mark bittman’s cauliflower soup recipe as a base, but altered it slightly:

in a large stockpot, saute 1 onion, 2 cloves garlic, a diced fuji apple, a bay leaf and 1 teaspoon kosher salt in 2 tablespoons oil. I used grapeseed oil we just picked up from fairway, it tastes great, is supposedly healthy and has a high smoke point. anyways, when the onion is soft add a pound and a half ofcauliflower, 3 1/4 cups of stock and 1/4 cup apple juice if you have it (if not, just use stock or water). cook until cauliflower is fall apart tender, and fish out the bay leaf. puree until the soup is smooth.

at this point the soup is fine to store in the fridge for several days. before serving, stir in a bit of cream and grate some sharp cheddar cheese, fresh black pepper and possibly a wisp of nutmeg on top.

power cleans 5×5:
135, 155, 165, 175, 180×4.

ran 2 miles, did 30 situps/15 30lb push press for time, 4:39.

I haven’t really been particular about grinding my own pepper in the past, but in this month’s cook’s illustrated, they review a bunch of peppercorns and essentially say not to bother buying preground pepper. this kind of surprised me as they are a pretty pragmatic bunch. since I am kind of a CI lemming anyways, I picked up some tellicherry peppercorns from fairway today, and tried it on roasted cauliflower and eggplants, otherwise known as lunch. holy shit! really incredible flavor, definitely the strongest and best pepper I can remember having.

in other news, this week in my composition class we’re writing a trio for cello, oboe and horn, based on the golden ratio. good stuff.

good recipe I’ve been making a lot recently. make or buy some tomato sauce, spoon a layer in a greased casserole dish. crack 3 eggs over top and bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes, depending on how you like your eggs. great, healthy breakfast, especially if you make your tomato sauce spicy!

don wood made a cool video of our fight gone bad workout yesterday, it’s about 4 minutes. also this guy sean took a lot of pictures.

are at lucille’s in boulder, colorado. lucille’s is in a small house just off pearl street in downtown boulder. you can tell from the outside it’s going to be good

the specials board read “corn pancakes with coconut milk syrup” on the day we were there, but I can make some pretty good jiffy corn pancakes at home and we didn’t come to boulder to fool around, so I ordered the eggs new orleans: poached eggs with hollandaise sauce served over two fried eggplant slices, with creole tomato sauce. if you are a grizzled breakfast veteran like me, you know that hollandaise sauce is a gutsy move, because it’s either going to suck or be the greatest thing ever. at lucille’s, it’s pretty damn close to the greatest thing ever:

your breakfast comes with a buttermilk biscuit and grits or potatoes. grits are damn near impossible to screw up and after all I am from the south, so I went with the grits just in case the hollandaise turned out poorly.

before you get your food, they bring you this:

fluffy, light, crusty on top, unbelievable, no honey required buttermilk flavor biscuits. for me, this biscuit was as close as I get to having a religous experience. I just didn’t think it was possible to get a biscuit this good in a restaurant. hell, I didn’t realize biscuits this good existed at all. according to the waitress, they freeze the butter, grate it in a cheese grater, and mix it in at the last minute so the biscuits get large air pockets and stay light.

by the way, lucille’s is from boulder by way of new orleans, so they serve chicory coffee with 20% chicory (less than cafe dumonde), and make their own ketchup and jellies. the coffee is top notch chicory coffee, and they had apple butter, strawberry rhubarb and pepper jelly the two times we visited. yep, it was so good we had to stop back by for lunch on the way to the airport. they serve breakfast all day. have mercy.

the eggs new orleans were pretty good the first time around, but since we were in colorado, the second time around I got the eggs ponchratrain, poached eggs with hollandaise served over pan fried trout.

I got the potatoes this time because the grits were good but unremarkable and I wanted to try the homemade ketchup. potatoes were a bit overdone but excellent with ketchup all the same. the trout was the single best dish I had in colorado, and we ate pretty good. very fresh, crisp exterior and flaky on the inside. they must make the hollandaise to order, I can’t see how they could get it that perfect everytime otherwise.

anyways, lucille’s is my idea of a perfect restaurant. staff is cool, service is casual but good, the old house is awesome (there’s a second bathroom upstairs, the glass doorknobs reminded me of my grandmothers house), and the food is damn close to divine.

so I eat half a cup of steel cut oats every morning, cooked in a slow cooker my sister gave me. that’s half a cup dry mind you, it’s at least 2.5 cups cooked. I used to be a solid cream/maple syrup guy, but in the past year I ditched the dairy (at least in my oats) and have tried lots of different stuff as flavoring:

- maple syrup
- honey
- jelly/preserves
- peanut butter
- toasted walnuts
- bananas
- dried fruit: cranberries, raisins, apricots, etc
- cinnamon
- nutmeg
- mace
- square of dark chocolate (I use lindt, 70 or 85%)
- vanilla extract

some good combinations:
cinnamon raisin
pb&j
bananas and toasted walnuts
chocolate peanut butter

choc peanut butter sounds like a terribly unhealthy breakfast, but it’s actually pretty healthy considering you only need a tablespoon of peanut butter and 1 square of chocolate to flavor a whole bowl. plus, natural peanut butter is great for you (in small quantities) and so is dark chocolate. this morning I had peanut butter and jelly and it was pretty solid, although peanut butter tends to be a real dominant flavor so it helps to dial it back some.

combined over two sessions because I forgot I had a meeting:
squats 5×5 @ 135, 185, 185, 205, 185
bench 4×5 @ 135, 175, 175, 185
deadlift 3×5 @ 135, 205, 225 (new personal best on this, woohoo!)

in other news, I made a lentil soup last night and used no oil, and it’s good. very weird. I didn’t use no oil on purpose, just sweated the vegetables dry to bring out the flavor and then added lentils straight away, and just never put any oil in. also, I made it with french green lentils from fairway as opposed to regular green lentils. they look different (green + black streaks) and hold together better than traditional green lentils. they’re also more expensive, but wtf they are lentils and legumes are as close as you can get to free in the grocery store.

this week I made dal with red lentils and rhubarb, along with standard spices (turmeric, cloves, cardamom, pepper). turned out really well! the rhubarb kind of disintegrates into the dal, leaving a nice aroma/flavor.in other news, I never really noticed before, but greenmarkets are horrendously expensive in comparison to fairway. mesclun greens are 12.99/lb at the park slope greenmarket, as compared to 5.99/lb at fairway. I am happy to pay a premium for locally grown stuff, but it’s not always clear to me that everything at the greenmarket is in fact locally grown.

workout today:Complete as many rounds in twenty minutes as you can of:
65 Pound Thruster, 10 reps
10 Pull-ups

ugh, I lost count of rounds due to various gym snafus (some random guy needs to use power rack, etc). between 8 and 10 sets, however I had to switch to assisted pullups 3 rounds in. super sore right now, glad tomorrow is a legit rest day.

last night I cooked 2 eggplants in a hot, dry, cast iron skillet, and cooked leeks in a hot, dry saute pan. by dry I mean no oil. I’ve never cooked a vegetable this way in my life, and after cooking for most of my life I was pretty sure in the back of my mind that this was a cruel joke mark bittman put in his otherwise excellent cookbook. to my amazement, both recipes worked out fine.

dry pan eggplant:

- put a small eggplant in a very hot cast iron skillet

- turn it, but otherwise leave it alone until it’s very squishy

- slit the skin, let it cool, and puree with roasted garlic and olive oil.

awesome sandwich spread, thickener for soup, etc!