The wedding on friday turned out to be the only sunny day this week so it was no less than perfect. The party was organized (by yours truly) as an 'American style BBQ' so everyone brought in loads and loads of food and drinks. People even brought a lot of vegan food so instead of chewing only a few pieces of cucumber I had about two whole pumpkinbreads with 3 kinds of hummus, 21 vegetable kebabs and two buckets of olives. AND a very small piece of non-vegan wedding cake. AND, because it was such a festive day, ofcourse I had about a bottle of cava per hour to wash it all away. Oh, the joy of marriage.
Saturday I woke up slightly (right) hungover but also happy and excited because I was going to perform at a very big festival called the 'Zwarte Cross'. Long story short: it was my best performance ever up to this day. We did a tribute to Janis Joplin and the crowd was crazily enthousiastic, singing along and cheering. I have some video proof. The food at the artist catering? Not that great, but there was a salad bar and I wasn't in need of a lot because of the food fest I had allowed myself the day before. The rain was, again, going out of it's way to just keep on keeping on so we decided not to stay at the festival. I was not really feeling the whole 'camping in the mud' thing, and sunday morning I was very pleased to be waking up in my own bed with my own hot shower and my own favourite whole foods store just a 5 minute walk away. My new ideal is to really listen to what my body is craving and give it just that. This particular sunday, everything inside me was opting for green lentils, garlic and fresh pesto. Yeah, I have a body that talks about food like that, I don't really know how it got that way. Anyway, I made a simple pasta and it was all divine goodness and managed to please my culinary snobbish stomach.
Green lentil comfort pasta & homemade walnut/sunflowerseedpesto
250 gr. brown mushrooms
1/4 cup dried green lentils
1 red onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 can of diced tomatoes
2 tbsp capers
dried thyme
dried oregano
dried rosemary
seasalt, black pepper
whole wheat pasta (I love spelt penne)
Pesto:
1/2 cup walnuts
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
Leaves of 1 whole basil plant
1 clove of garlic
olive oil
seasalt
Cook the lentils in a pot until tender, mine took about 35 minutes. In the meantime, slice up the mushrooms. Chop up the red onion and garlic, but not too small, you want to keep the chunks kind of 'rustic'. Bake the mushrooms in a large skillet with some fat or oil (I use coconut oil). After a few minutes, add the garlic and onion and keep stirring. Then, add the chopped tomatoes, capers and seasonings to taste. Go easy on the salt, the capers already add a lot of saltiness! Finally add the cooked and drenched lentils, put a lid on it and keep the whole thing on very low heat. In the meantime you can boil some water for your pasta and make the pesto by putting all the ingredients in a foodprocessor. I like to add only a little bit of olive oil to keep it low-fat and chunky but you can make it as runny as you like.
Stir in your pasta with the tomatosauce and serve with a good spoonful of pesto. Enjoy with a simple movie, leave the dishes for tomorrow and happily fall asleep.
