“I’m making lentils tonight.  They’re really easy to use.  I should make extra.  I’ll just make the whole bag.  No problem!”

We’ll just say that I got a little more than I bargained for.  After I made my original recipe (involving lentils and red curry), I still had about five cups of leftover lentils to use.  What to do?

Like many vegetarians, I wasn’t born and raised on a plant-based diet.  And one favorite growing up was meatloaf.  While I don’t miss the meat, I do miss the experience of that tasty comfort food.  I’ve had lentil loaf at vegetarian restaurants and really liked it.  But I’ve never gotten around to making it, despite my best intentions.  So, I reasoned, the time was here to finally make lentil loaf!  I was very excited.  Now to find a recipe…

I scoped out Pinterest, Allrecipes, Google, etc., etc.  My husband always shakes his head at my love of searching recipes and reading cookbooks.  Given how much of the cooking I do at our house (the vast minority), it is rather humorous.  But I love the feeling of finding a new and delicious recipe and declaring kitchen victory when it hits the spot.  This time around, I settled on a recipe from The Simple Veganista.  How could I resist a recipe called The Ultimate Vegetable Lentil Loaf?

I must say, I was not disappointed.  The crew all gave it a thumbs up.  It was pretty easy to make.  Here are my changes and comments:

• It calls for one cup of dry lentils.  I used two cups of pre-cooked lentils for good measure (and an attempt to use as many leftover lentils as possible!).  It worked well.
• It says to cook the lentils and reserve some of the leftover liquid.  I already had pre-made lentils, so I compensated by adding a little water and olive oil when I was blending the lentils.  I added enough to let it blend easily in the food processor without making it liquid-y.
• For oats and oat flour: I just used regular old Quaker-type oats.  I didn’t have oat flour, so I used standard all-purpose flour.
• The glaze recipe calls for maple syrup, which I didn’t have.  I substituted agave nectar with a touch of molasses.  The glaze was yummy.
• I lined the pan with parchment paper because I surprisingly had some in the house and it made for handy clean-up.  Some people in the comments section mentioned they greased the pan with coconut oil or something similar and had good results.  All personal preference.
• Don’t be afraid to liberally season this up.  The loaf itself was a tiny bit bland.  The glaze was delicious and definitely livened it up, but you could can be heavy-handed with your spice rack on this one to make it your own.

This was surprisingly filling.  I made a side of mashed potatoes and some steamed garden-fresh peas (yay for gardening season!).  Served like that, we will easily get eight servings out of it.  Looking forward to some leftover lentil loaf tomorrow!

Now to figure out what to do with the other three cups of lentils…Time to go recipe hunting!

Original recipe and image from The Simple Veganista:
http://thesimpleveganista.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-ultimate-vegetable-lentil-loaf.html