Foodie Friday: Lentil Loaf

I do not talk often about the fact that I am a vegetarian here on the blog, but it is an important part of my life. I hope the food posts around here feel like a feature on tasty food and not an alternative thing to eat if you do not eat meat. I find when you focus on vegetarian eating with a constant attempt to replace meat with an “alternative” the results tend to be quite boring, a let down and why am I trying to make an imitation to something I did not want to eat in the first place. Hence the lack of fake meat product posts around here.

Having explained all that, I could not resist doing a Lentil “Meat” Loaf Foodie Friday for our retro theme. For starters meat loaf screams blast from the past food to me and secondly I never ate meat loaf growing up and am not really sure what it should taste like. Therefore lentil loaf to me is just a yummy way to cook lentils (which I love!) and an excuse to slather BBQ sauce on something (another love of mine!).

I very loosely used a recipe from Epicurious, it was kind of like a guide and I really did my own thing when making this dish.
Ingredients:
1 cup dried lentils
2 cups water
1 onion- diced
9 cloves garlic- minced
1 bay leaf
2 tsp. dried parsley
1 tsp. smoked paprika
1 tsp. rosemary
1 tsp. oregano
1 tsp. cumin
2 tsp. thyme
1 tsp. sage
1 Tbl. basil
1 Tbl. red chili pepper flakes (optional)
1 small can tomato sauce
1 Tbl. mustard (optional)
1 egg
2 ribs celery-diced small
About 1 cup mushrooms-diced small
1 cup quick oats
salt and pepper (to taste)
olive oil

Clean lentils. In pan add lentils, water, onion and 3 of the cloves of garlic mined, bay leaf, cumin, salt and pepper. Bring ingredients to a boil, cover and simmer for 25 minutes. Drain any extra water, throw away bay leaf and mash everything together (with a potato masher or even a fork works).

Add diced celery to a pan with a little olive oil and cook a bit before adding mushrooms and the other 6 cloves of garlic. Once the mushrooms start to turn brown add all remaining spices.

Mix together lentil mixture with celery and mushroom saute. Add mustard if you so desire. Mix in oatmeal, egg and half of the tomato sauce. Add to an oven safe baking dish and spread with the remaining tomato sauce. Cook for about 50 minutes. Allow to cool a bit before serving. Slather with BBQ sauce or ketchup, if one is in to that sort of thing.