Lentils and Italian Sausage

• Food: Lentils with Italian Sausage
• Ingredients: lentils, chicken broth, carrots, celery, shallots, italian sausage, diced tomatoes, salt, pepper, cinnamon, clove
• Prep time: 25 minutes
• Cook time: 1 hour, 15 minutes

After our delicious overdose of carbs and steak last week, we decided to keep this week’s meal a little healthier. So we did the unthinkable and cooked a meal that included vegetables! Right now you are probably about to close the tab and move on to another blog because you don’t believe anything with vegetables could ever taste good, but wait! It was actually tasty, I promise!!

It may look like something that's already been digested, but I promise it tasted good!

We made a lentil and Italian sausage stew, inspired by a recent post on Homemade Delish. Lentils have amazing health benefits, including (but not limited to) their ability to lower cholesterol, stabilize blood sugar, make teeth whiter, lower risk of heart disease, improve dance moves, reduce appetite, and endow the eater with telepathic powers. Really, they do almost half of those things. Now that we’ve got you on the lentil bandwagon, lets learn how to cook them!

To start, add three pounds of lentils, six bay leaves, and three quarts of chicken broth to a pan and bring to a boil. Once it starts boiling, reduce the heat to keep it at a low boil and let cook for about 40 minutes.

I honestly have no idea what they bay leaf is for, but it made the pictures a little prettier!

While the lentils cook, chop up 1 lb of carrots, 9 stalks of celery, 9 cloves of garlic, and two shallots. Once chopped, transfer them to pretty bowls so you can pretend you are on a cooking show!

Look! Vegetables!

It's like Mickey Mouse made out of veggies.

Add the vegetables to a pan with olive oil and cook over medium heat for a while. We only cooked them for about 8 minutes, but that was not nearly long enough. We recommend at least doubling it.

What’s that? You don’t know how to put vegetables into a pan? No worries! Our latest installment of embarrassing cooking videos will show you the way!

With videos like that, I don’t know how we aren’t famous yet. I forgot to take pictures of the next few steps (I was traumatized from being filmed), so you will have to use your imagination. Unless you want me to add in some paint illustrations like this one.

Once you have cooked the veggies for a while, add in two cans of diced tomatoes, a bit of cinnamon and ground cloves, and a LOT of salt and pepper. When the lentils are done cooking, drain them, remove the bay leaves, and return them to the pot. Add the veggies and half a bottle of white wine and let simmer on low heat while the sausage cooks.

This is about when it starts looking like a regurgitated mess. Don't worry; that means you are doing it right!

To cook the sausages, coat them in olive oil and bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes. Serve on top of the lentils and garnish with a bay leaf if you are being fancy.

Real chefs use garnishes.

This meal also makes versatile leftovers. The sausages can be served the next night with onions and peppers, and I think Jill is going to turn her leftover lentils into lentil soup later this week!