It's funny, but I don't think I've ever heard of eating fresh lettuce before. In fact I don't even know what a "lettuce plant" (lettuce tree ? ;)) looks like. Damn, now I have to learn something again.

Dinner tonight was yummy, but the interesting thing is not just that it was yummy but how it *came* to be yummy.

Periodically I run across tasty looking vegetarian stew recipes and tell myself I should really make them more often, but none of the recipes have ever resulted in anything I would consider making a second time. Turns out I was approaching the problem the wrong way.

I was cleaning out the fridge tonight and making "leftover chili" - bits of bacon, beef, sausage, lots of onions / garlic / jalapenos, various spices, dollop of generic chili powder, the usual.

I had more spice lids fall off in the pot than happens in a typical evening, so the chili ended up too peppery - not really too hot, just too much pepper taste. It tasted a bit like a good jambalaya before adding the rice, which gave me ideas.

I figured it wouldn't hurt to dump in a few mushrooms to soak up the spices, but the plastic wrap fell of the mushroom tray as well so I ended up adding a whole pound of sliced mushrooms. Now it was too mushroom-y and still too pepper-y as well so I added some rice, lentils, and a whole lot more water. It had to simmer for an hour or so before all the "crunchy" disappeared, but (a) the result was yummy, and (b) now I know vegetarian-ish* stews can taste good I'm going to stop giving them the hairy eyeball and try making them some more.

* I know the dish was not vegetarian but (a) bacon is a vegetable in most European countries, and (b) the amount of other meats was very small compared to the finished result. It's close enough to vegetarian for me.

Last edited by bridgman; 06/16/10 03:26 AM.
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