Lemony Lentil Salad with Roasted Veggies and Fried Halloumi Cheese

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Let me tell you what led me to the discovery of my new favorite food: lentil salad with roasted veggies and fried cheese. What’s that? A salad with fried cheese on top? Health meets decadence? Virtue meets indulgence?

YES to all of this.

It started when I had exactly 5 minutes to run through the grocery store, with my whole family waiting out in the car, for a quick stop to ‘pick up a few things’ (have you ever been in that situation? My heart pounded thinking about what will happen if they go rogue on my husband). When I walked by the cheese case and saw Halloumi cheese, ‘great for grilling!’ I grabbed it to possibly throw on the grill with our other food without much thought because *rogue children*.

And then I forgot about it.

Days later when I found it in the cheese drawer, I googled recipes to use it up and found one that fried it with honey. I had to try it.

You’ll find out pretty quickly as you assemble this dish that every single ingredient is delicious on its own and you’ll have to stop yourself from eating it. Roasted broccoli and cauliflower? So good.

Lemony garlic lentils cooked with a bay leaf and vegetable stock? Love.

And the final touch that is really more of a religious experience then salad topping: fried Halloumi cheese that is tossed in honey at the end so it becomes caramelized.

If you haven’t cooked with Halloumi before, it is a Greek hard cheese that is sort of like a cross between Manchego and Feta. It is great for grilling, and these recipes by Bobby Flay and the NYTimes both look excellent.

But this recipe, which is adapted from one by Jamie Oliver, opens up a whole new world for me: frying your cheese and finishing it with honey. The sweet-salty bite is one of those tastes that make you want to keep coming back for another taste. 

This dish composes so many elements – salty cheese, sweet honey, crunchy nuts, toothsome lentils, bitter roasted veggies, sour lemon and pungent garlic to make everything else sing. The dressing poured over the hot lentils infuses so much flavor.

Its truly like nothing I’ve ever eaten before.

It’s also a great dish to bring to a party, since you can cook all the different parts ahead of time, and set aside, then assemble all the ingredients before you go. Or just make it for yourself on a Monday night.

Hope you find a way to bring this into your life – you will thank me!

Lemony Lentil Salad with Roasted Veggies and Fried Halloumi Cheese (printer version here):

Ingredients:

4 cups broccoli and cauliflower (I used orange cauliflower)

olive oil

4 cloves of garlic

1 cup lentils

1 litre organic vegetable stock

1 fresh bay leaf

2 lemons

extra virgin olive oil

¼ cup walnuts or sliced almonds

1 large bunch of mixed soft herbs (parsley, mint, chervil)

250 g halloumi cheese (about a cup)

2 tablespoons runny honey

Directions:

  1. Preheat the oven to 425ºF.

  2. Cut the broccoli and cauliflower into even-sized florets, then spread out in a single layer in a roasting tray. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with sea salt & black pepper.

  3. Toss in the unpeeled cloves of garlic, then spread everything out in the tray and pop in the oven. Roast for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the veg is cooked through and charred on the outside.

  4. Pop the lentils in a medium-sized pan, pour over the hot stock and add the bay leaf. Gently bring to the boil over a medium heat, then reduce to a simmer and cook for 25 to 30 minutes, or until they’re cooked but still retain some bite. Drain and set aside.

  5. Make the dressing by squeezing the garlic out of its skin into a bowl. Mash until creamy, then squeeze in the lemon juice and season. Whisk to combine, then add a couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil.

  6. Toast the walnuts or almonds in a dry frying pan over a medium heat. Pick and chop the herb leaves, then toss with the walnuts and set aside.

  7. Toss the hot lentils through the garlic dressing, followed by the roasted veggies, herbs and nuts.

  8. Pour a lug of olive oil into a medium-sized, non-stick frying pan over a medium heat. Chop and fry the halloumi until it’s golden.

  9. Drizzle over the honey and fry for 1 more minute, until sticky and caramelized. Scatter the halloumi over the salad and serve immediately.

 

How I Sleep Train

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sleepeasysolution

Michael is sleep trained. Praise the Lord.

And what good is having a blog if you can’t shout this from the rooftops?

He is my 5th child to be sleep trained. And each time I was pressed up hard against desperation.

There is an acute edge to sleep deprivation. It is subtle, incessant, fluid, crushing. Every coping mechanism in you is sedated; everything that overwhelms you and makes you cranky and sucks patience out of you is loud. I am convinced a babies smiley-est days coincide with the hardest days of sleep deprivation because God knew we would need a light to our days.

I have historically trained our children at around 6 months. Ronan is about 2-3 weeks behind Michael on most things, and though he has always been a better sleeper than Michael, I think he is teething right now, so I will sleep train him next. I wanted to share how I did it with Michael while it is fresh because it feels like a miracle every time, and I think it could help other families. With the twins we were traveling and teething for most of their 6thmonth, so I waited, just as the bible told me too.

Not THEE Bible.

The Sleep Training Bible.

The Sleep Easy Solution.

I know that there are a lot of methods out there, and if another method or no method works for you know that I AM THRILLED FOR YOU. I am thrilled for any way a momma can get sleep.

But when my friend Angi mentioned that her nine-month old wasn’t sleeping through the night, and that her 5 year old didn’t sleep through the night until he was 3, I gave her the quick 5 minute synopsis about how The Sleep Easy Solution works since I had just re-read the book in preparation, and she emailed me back in two weeks to tell me it worked! Her son was sleeping through the night!

So I figured I would leave that synopsis here in case it helps even one other family.

First, let me say what it is not – it is not the Ferber method. It is not cry it out, although there are small contained periods of crying that in my experience have been at the most two 10-minute crying sessions. It is not attachment parenting.

What it is: the theory that learning to fall asleep on our own is a life skill. And we can help our babies learn it by letting them try to fall asleep on their own. You can learn more about it, and get their handouts at their website, www.sleepyplanet.com.

Here it goes:

When you sleep train, you need to pick a week where you are not traveling, and you and your baby are not sick or teething or otherwise going through a big transition or milestone, such as suddenly crawling, or starting a new job or sitter. Waiting for a good week pays off, and will reduce the frustration and amount of time you spend sleep training.

The book goes through several checklists that are also available on their website: what your nightly routine should be (a bath, getting dressed in a sleep sack, reading a book, a song, a nurse or bottle feed), what needs to be in the room (blackout shades, possibly a white noise machine or humidifier, absolutely nothing in the bed/crib that is stimulating save one lovely if they need, more for older kids).

You do your routine every night for a week or so, and those nights record the times your child wakes up and how long they feed for. This is the most crucial step for me, since all my kids fed through the night out of habit, mainly because they nursed back to sleep. So my main goal in sleep training is to break them of needing to fall asleep sucking, and then also wean them of their night feeds. Other people might have other ‘sleep stealers’ as the book calls them, and they go through how to deal with each one. But for me, our main sleep stealer is night feeds.

As you are doing your routine every night during the ‘warm up’ period (as I like to call it), your baby will start to associate a bath and a book with bed time, and they will become cues that it is night time. It’s also good to try to start putting your baby down when they are drowsy but not asleep. Falling asleep on their own, without sleep aids, is ultimately the goal, and this is SO much easier to do if you catch them in that window when they are naturally drowsy. When putting them down for the night, you can pat their back or bum, sing a song, play a musical toy that is short (no crib entertainment stations), but try to walk out while they are still awake. If Michael fell asleep while nursing, I would wake him up by kissing him and saying goodnight or talking to him. Then I would lay him down in the crib. I found that each night I tried to do this our babies got better and better at learning they could rub their head back and forth to sooth themselves, or rub their hand back and forth, or scratch the sheets rhythmically. These are all great tools since it is their way to self sooth. If you have a thumb sucker, they have a great built in way to self sooth. As they get older, this often becomes rubbing a lovey or stroking the silky part of it or rubbing it across their nose. (A paci is only ok if they can reliably put it back in their mouth on their own – since the goal is for them to put themselves to sleep on their own – and if you do want to use the authors recommend to leave several in the crib).

The main goal of the warm up period is to practice putting them to sleep drowsy but not asleep, and take note of the times they wake up. You should also be filling your husband in on the plan once you’ve come up with it so you are both on the same page, and so he can be moral support to you if you are waffling in your decisions.

When you are ready to sleep train, follow the charts they have on their website, sleepyplanet.com or in the book.

The goal is to get your baby to sleep for 10-11 hours and have some sample schedules. Our goal range was 7:30-6am. They will have you write down the times they’ve been waking up in between – for Michael it was 10:30, 2, and 4:30. Then you write down how long they feed for. We had 18 minutes, 5 minutes, 5 minutes (think this is roughly equal to 6 oz, 4 oz, 4 oz of bottle feeding.).

You set your alarm for an hour before their normal wake up time. My times were: 9:30 dream feed before I went to bed, and set my alarm for 1 and 3:30. The first night you wake them up at those times and give them their feed. The next night you feed them at the same times, but shave off 1 0z or 2 minutes of nursing. The next night you shave 1 oz. or 2 min. of nursing. By the third night, I was down to one feed for 4 minutes, and the other feeds for 1 minute. Then the last night, I dropped 2 of the feeds at 1 and 3:30, and only feed him at 9:30 for 4 minutes.

If they should wake up at their old feed times, and Michael did the night we dropped them, you let them cry for 10 minutes, and then if they are still crying you go in for 30 seconds and stand in the MIDDLE of the room – halfway between the bed and the door – and say “its ok, baby, you’re fine. I love you. It’s night night time. Go back to sleep.” Or whatever loving reassuring words you want to deliver. DO NOT PICK YOUR BABY UP. DO NOT FEED THEM OR PAT THEIR BUM OR BACK OR TOUCH THEM AT ALL. DO NOT PULL BUNNY’S MUSICAL CHORD OR TURN LITTLE LAMB’S KNOB. You want to let them know you are nearby, but they are fine, and they can just go back to sleep. You want to let them know that their cries won’t result in getting cuddles or food, otherwise they will always keep crying and never give up and just go to sleep. This concept helps me make decisions in my middle of the night sleepy state. (When Michael woke up at 2:30 and his feed time was 3:30 I was like, should I just feed him early? And then I remembered this principle and thought, NO. You can’t reward a wake up and a cry with a feed. I let him cry, he was out in 8 minutes, and then I woke him an hour later at 3:30 to give him his feed.)

On our 4th night Michael cried for 10 minutes during his 2 am feed time, and I went in and reassured him, for less than 30 seconds, not touching him. When I went back to bed he cried for 8 more minutes and THAN HE WENT TO SLEEP. ON HIS OWN. This right here is the point at which he is become sleep trained. He was able to put himself back to bed.

The next night he woke up at the 2 am feed time, cried for 5-8 minutes and went back to bed. I didn’t have to get out of bed at all.

The third night, he slept from 7:30-6 with just his 9:30 dream feed.

ALLELUJIA.

Ronan woke up at 4:30 so it wasn’t as epic as it was with my other kids BUT STILL. It amazes me that it is so possible to sleep train a baby in a week! And all my other kids trained in a week as well.

If this sounds hard and complicated, it’s really not – just blindly follow what they tell you to do on their print outs. And just follow it as best you can. I’m sharing all the details in case they help someone. It’s an art not a science so don’t freak out if it doesn’t go perfectly according to plan.

There are times where illness, teething and traveling disrupt their ability to go back to sleep on their own. Usually during those times they needed me to rock them or feed them to go back to sleep and started to get used to it. When they were off track I just went back to the basics and re-did a sleep training week and it would only take 2-3 days to get back on track.

Ok, I’m going back to taking care of these sweet babies now. But I hope this is as life changing for you (if you need it!) as it has been for me.

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Dearest Blog Readers:

I AM SLEEP TRAINING BABIES THIS WEEK. YAY!

And also, whoa. So I didn’t get to do my weekly meal plan and new post as I’d hoped.

Because it is both refilling parts of your night with solid sleep, and somehow exposing you to just how deep your sleep deficit is. Either way, it worked on night one and I am thrilled. We have been following the Sleep Easy Solution and I am working on a post about it because its our 5th time following it and it works. And exhausted parents should know about it.

But in the meantime, I wanted to re-share this post with you since it is what I am making for dinner tonight now that the weather is nice enough to have an herb garden. It is SO delicious, and what better way to celebrate the week we put in our herb garden then this Herb Chicken with Crème Fraîch dinner? Related: what is more therapeutic then a garden center when you are exhausted?

I will resume my meal planning when we are through with this intense week.

Happy eating, and hope you love this dinner as much as we did! xoxo Katie

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I couldn’t be more excited to share Roast Chicken with Crème Fraîche and Herbs for the next installment of The Humble Onion Tuesday Dinners. I am hoping that by searching the hashtag  #thotuesdaydinners you can have quick and easy meal ideas at your fingertips for when you meal plan. Or frantically think of dinner at 4:30 like I do on busy days.

This dinner is the trifecta of home cooking; it is easy, delicious and the kids will happily eat it (and possibly lick their plates like mine did). I know many kids have already gone back to school and ours start next Monday, so I am on the hunt for fast easy dinners that still feel a bit special.

As I mentioned last week I am infatuated with the cookbook My Kitchen In France. She shared her recipe for a whole Roasted Chicken with this mixture on top and I was d-y-i-n-g  to make it. I had a package of chicken thighs in the fridge and some Crème Fraîche, and I thought why not just try it with these?

The result? Totally delicious. The chicken thighs cook in a third of the time but the meat has lots of flavor. And the crème fraîche mixture is totally simple but so fragrant and delicious. 

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The perfume from the shallots, garlic and herbs is just intoxicating, and when creme fruit melts it almost turns into butter and makes the most amazing gravy. Luckily I served it with whole wheat couscous which was perfect for sopping up all that goodness, but mashed potatoes would be heaven too. (I may have tipped the pan sideways to pour all the leftover juices on my plate).

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So don’t forget to add Crème Fraîche, shallots, herbs and chicken thighs on your next shopping list (that’s right. This dinner has 5 ingredients). And get ready to lick your plate. You will totally thank me, scouts honor.

Roast Chicken with Crème Fraîche and Herbs (printer version here): 

1 package of chicken thighs (around 2-3 lbs or a whole chicken, around 3 lbs)
1 & 1/4 cup crème fraîche (you can also use fromage blanc – alternatively, you can mix 2 tbsp buttermilk or sour cream with 1 cup heavy cream)
4 cloves of garlic, finely sliced
1 shallot, finely sliced
A large bunch of parsley, chopped
A few sprigs of fresh thyme
Salt and black pepper

Preheat oven to 350F

Mix crème fraîche with finely chopped garlic, parsley, thyme, salt and black pepper. (If using a whole chicken spoon half of the mixture inside the cavity of the chicken & truss the chicken). Spoon the cream on each piece of chicken.
Transfer to preheated oven and cook for 20-25 minutes (60-75 minutes for a whole bird).

Serve with couscous or mashed potatoes.

Adapted from Mimi Thorisson’s recipe in My Kitchen in France. 

 

On Learning Curves

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Last Friday evening, I took my daughters to their first ‘Open Mic’ night. Their piano teacher sets these up a few times a year so students can showcase their pieces they’ve been working on.

It had rained on our way there, and the air was heavy and humid when we got out of the car. My daughters skipped through the puddles in their sandals, French braids flying and dresses fluttering. Having left the babies with my husband, our toes and our spirits felt like they had just shed weight.

In the Episcopal church where their teacher gives lessons, we let our hearts soar to different pieces of music.  It was incredible that so many students who were new to piano could already give the gift of magic that art produces. My daughters rested their heads on my shoulders, and I breathed in the happiness of the moment, when we were suspended above our busy lives.

On the way home, we got to talking about creativity, and art, and learning curves. One of my daughters had made a mistake on her piece and was feeling deflated.  I told her what my guitar teacher told me in my 20’s that has helped me so much ever since – Respect Your Learning Curve. (I can barely play a song but all of my guitar lessons were worth it to understand this one lesson.) I had recently read an article on How To Get Through the Not So Graceful Beginnings that I thought might help my daughter so we read it on the way home.

One of the students played Billy Joel’s ‘Piano Man’ and I told the girls about an interview I saw with Billy Joel on Oprah. He said that he never let the muse lead him to the piano. Rather, he had set times he showed up to the piano every day and let the muse decide if she wanted to meet him there.

It was helpful for me to revisit these truths about creativity.

I am almost 12 years into mothering, and what I know so acutely is that mothers need a creative outlet like they need air. I was lucky enough to have read a book while I was pregnant with my first son called ‘Women First, Family Always’  that laid out the idea that a woman needs to be connected to her soul, her husband, and her children in order to thrive. If one of these three connections is weak, all the others suffer.

I think it was possibly one of the greatest graces of my life to have read this before having children. It meant that I always knew that pursuing my passions – whether it was writing or cooking or praying or running – would always strengthen the other roles I had.  It helped me understand the dull, gnawing feeling that something was off when my husband and I hadn’t really talked in a while. If I needed to write. If I needed to connect with one of my kids. And that all of these were important.

It gave me the idea that in the family unit, everyone needed to thrive, including the mother. Yes, there are seasons where you aren’t thriving, your surviving, for sure (I’m looking at you, Michael for waking up three times last night teething). Still, knowing how to paddle back to something that resembles thriving (writing, reading a book, eating a sandwich sitting down) is the only way to avoid capsizing.

But here’s the thing – six months into having twins, I had forgotten ALL of these truths.

Yes, it’s understandable that sleep deprivation and some serious high-level mothering and sacrificing have been running the show to the exclusion of so much else this season. But that wasn’t the reason I hadn’t written.

It was because I had gotten rejected.

I had sent out my second book to a handful of agents and they passed.

I just barely scratched the surface of the list of agents I had, but I had forgotten that this is part of the process. Getting rejected. And so I had shut down. I had stopped trying. Stopped showing up at the piano to see if the muse would meet me there. I made the excuse that the twins were a lot, I’ll try later. But the truth was that I had let the oldest saboteur of creativity infect me: fear.

To do anything creative, you have to be fine with getting a lot of nos. With silence. With mistakes. With no attention. With a lot of doors slammed. With screwing up at recitals and still going back again the next week. Its all part of the process.

And if you give up, if you don’t engage with the process, you’ll suffer. It will look like crankiness and eating too much sugar. But its just your creativity trying to break out. So give it a place to go. Don’t give up on it when you get uncomfortable or you think you don’t look good.

Our ride home from the Open Mic night reminded me of the vitality of pursing something creative. Giving it a chance, letting it infect you, from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. Even if you fail. Especially if you fail.

And there is something important about recognizing this yes, at the not so graceful beginnings of things. But its also important to recognize it at the not so graceful middles of things too.

Sometimes learning curves are steepest at the beginning. And sometimes re-learning curves are really heavy and hard to lift in the middle of the journey too. That’s when we need to look around to the bright lights out there to help us with the heavy lifting. To other thinkers and writers that say you have to do a lot of bad work to get to the good work. To podcasts that remind you that failure is part of the process so get comfortable. To new piano students who remind us of the magic of listening to someone else play.

 

 

Weekly Meal Plan 4/30

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As you may know if you follow me on Instagram, Monday April 30th was my son’s birthday, and the birthday boy requested spaghetti and meatballs, so that was our meal on Monday. Sorry to duplicate. But Tuesday’s dinner was so good, every loved it. Plus I cooked extra pasta and spaghetti squash on Monday so I just warmed it up. Pro Tip.

Monday: Slow Cooker Spaghetti and Meatballs

Tuesday: Paleo Slow Cooker Balsamic Chicken and Sausage

This was a big hit with everyone! And I loved that it came together really easily in the crock pot. I think next time I will double up on the balsamic vinegar and add a bit more garlic, but otherwise it was really flavorful and had that comfort food factor. Also, cheese on top doesn’t hurt but if you’re aiming for health it’s a winner as is.

Wednesday: Roast Chicken with Creme Fraiche and Herbs

I love this recipe SO much – Mimi Thorisson does it with a whole chicken but I use thighs and it is quick and delicious and easy. Serve with couscous or mashed potatoes to soak up all that delicious liquid on the bottom of the pan with the melted creme fraiche and herbs.

Thursday: Bacon wrapped Pork Tenderloin – 

This is a super old post with old photos, but it sort of adds to the fact that this is a retro dinner, one that my mom used to make when I was growing up. It’s a long post but a SHORT recipe – pork tenderloin, onions, peppers, and tomatoes all sliced and stacked with semi-cooked bacon wrapped around it with a toothpick. Season with salt and pepper and roast. It’s one of those ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’ kind of dish, where the combination of these ingredients is surprisingly flavorful and very satisfying. And that lemon butter zucchini side dish is strait out of my childhood and SO good. 

Friday: It’s pizza, but we are making our own and doing a Brussels Sprout + Pancetta version for the grown ups with a sauce that is just jarred alfredo sauce and probably store bought pizza dough (I love to make my own but with twins I concede to let the pizza dough makers do it). Here is a comparable recipe.

Saturday: I made three Baked Ziti so we could have some for busy sports days and this Saturday is pretty typical of our spring sports season. So glad it’s waiting there for us! The Pioneer Woman’s Baked Ziti is very close to how I make it (hope to blog my recipe soon!).