Healthy recipe Thursday

My friend Posie asked me for a recipe after I wrote about my lunch a few days ago. The recipes I use now are a bit more basic because, in the last year, my diet has changed quite a bit.

April of last year: diagnosed with cancer
June: cut out dairy and meat (except I ate fish once a week)
July: Started cutting out liquor
September: Liquor/fish were gone
January: cut out flour products (I'll eat them once a week) and eat brown rice, barley, millet, oats, etc..
January: cut out white/brown sugars...started looking up what was in my beloved Starbucks drinks
March: limited fruits to rarely because a banana can have 30g of fructose in it! Began actively eating more broccoli/cauliflower/kale/bok choy.
April: limited caffeine and soy milk (soy in it's purest forms: miso and tofu are still great according to recent medical journals.)

Even though, I have been much less active because I hurt my back, my weight is still as low as ever. Eating like a well-rounded farm animal is totally my secret to weight loss (and Kill looks even better than me)!

Back to the task of recipes, this is a super basic recipe that you can mix with anything.

Brown rice and red lentils

Ingredients: 

1 cup brown rice (sifted, soaked and drained)

1 cup lentils (any colour will do, sifted, rinsed)

1 tbsp curry powder

1 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp salt

Water

• Take 1 cup brown rice (I prefer short grain) and put it in a colander or strainer. Rinse it and then pick out any shrivelled or funny coloured grains (I bet you'll find 5 or 6). Soak lentils in 2 cups water for an hour or more. 

• Take 1 cup lentils and do the same as the rice, except that you don't need to soak them. Christina Pirello says that they don't take longer to cook if you don't soak beans and that soaking actually contributes to farting (Cooking the Whole Foods Way, 2007)

• Get rid of the soaking water, put rice and lentils in a rice cooker (I got mine at T&T Asian market for $34.99) with water filled up to the 3 line in your rice cooker.

• Cook for about 50 minutes but your rice cooker should cook uninterrupted until it senses the water is gone. Once it's close to done or after it beeps I put in about a Tbsp of masala mix from Superstore and 1 tsp of extra turmeric for colour, about 1/2 tsp of salt. Stir it in.

• Eat this alone, in a wrap, as a cold rice salad or put it in a squash soup. It's super versatile and if you don't like curry then don't put it in :).

*If you use a pressure cooker or a pot then don't despair! I haven't made it using those methods but I will and then I'll update the recipe or if you make it then please send me the times and liquid amounts.