Gruel

One summer while I was in high school and one while in college I lived with my aunt and uncle. I have many stories from living with them, one of which is regarding the concocting of gruel.

My aunt and uncle are not proficient in the kitchen. At the same time, they are somewhat fanatical about calorie intake and balanced diets (with very little will power). The assortment of food in their pantry was always a mystery to me. If I ever bought ice cream it had to be eaten immediately or I would come home to find an empty container in the freezer.

One of my uncle's go-to meals was gruel. His recipe consisted of a box of cous cous, can of tomato paste, frozen vegetables, and often a can of tuna fish. I unfortunately ate a lot of this as well and don't remember it all that fondly.

Skip ahead to a couple years ago and an artist I know was talking about experimenting in the kitchen - combining lentils with an onion, garlic, tomatoes, curry powder, and plain yogurt. Yum. I tried out my own combination and have made it ever since.

The other day, pre-trip to Trader Joe's I took stock of the pantry and determined I should make lentils. It was the perfect warm lunch for today.

My recipe goes roughly like this:
Sautee an onion and a couple cloves of garlic until they soften. Add a can of diced tomatoes and roughly a cup of lentils (my recipes are all approximations). Add water and simmer until lentils are soft, continuing to add water to the pan when it runs low. Add curry powder until smell is consistent with your preference. Serve with a dollop of plain yogurt on top (for the un-initiated; plain yogurt is similar to sour cream and a great topping for soups and all sorts of other things).

I happened to have a bag of frozen green vegetables that I tossed in too, figuring that would up the healthy index of what happened to be in my pan.

It was at this point that I realized I had updated my uncle's gruel recipe.