This is the latest installment of my continuing quest to improve my health by eating better despite a tight budget. I haven't been on a scale this week but my husband says I feel smaller and I can now pull off the pants which used to be too tight without unbuttoning them first. I haven't exercised for a few days due to a nasty sinus infection - gotta be careful not to let my metabolism slip!

So many people responded to my open call of last week with lovely recipes using lentils. I read them all, and after considering what I had in the fridge, what I did was this, which I'm calling 

Barley/Lentil pottage

1 cup barley

1 cup soaked lentils

assorted vegetables that I happened to have on hand:  carrots, onion, zucchini, spinach, celery

beef stock

cider vinegar

lemon juice

minced garlic, pepper, red pepper, oregano, basil

olive oil

I started with about a tablespoon of olive oil, red pepper flakes, black pepper, and garlic, in a nice big soup pot. Heated it just enough to be fragrant, about a minute, then sauteed the onion until translucent and just turning brown (wanted the carmelized flavor). Added a whole mess of not-pretty-enough-to-use-in-salads-anymore baby spinach and cooked until just wilted. Then added the barley, can of beef stock, and chopped carrots with enough water to cover plus about 2 inches. Cooked about 30 minutes, then added more water, the lentils plus zucchini plus a glup (I'm guessing a glup is slightly less than 1/4 cup) of cider vinegar and a couple tablespoons of lemon juice, plus some spices. Cooked until the lentils were tender and the barley quite soft, maybe 40 minutes. The objective is stew, not soup;  the lentils and barley should absorb most of the liquid. No need to add salt since I used store-bought stock which had a ton of salt already.

This turned out pretty good on the first day and just delicious on the second day. Best of all, my husband, the guy who won't eat lentils, ate it twice in a row without complaining!  The first day we ate it by itself with black bread, the second day we baked a couple of little tiny flounder and ate it as a side dish. My husband says lentils are still ugly, but this pottage cleverly disguises them - they absorb enough of the beef stock that they turn the same color as the barley. Next time I'm going into town to a grocery with better selection than our neighborhood one, I will look for pretty colored lentils.

Other things that work:

Spray olive oil.

Whole grain tortillas.

Now, I know canola oil is supposedly the healthiest possible oil, but some studies say olive oil is equally good if not better, and besides, I love the flavor of olive oil. This stuff comes in a can and it's extra virgin olive oil, period. Perfect for adding just a tiny bit of oil. It's an especially nice way to spray the tops of things you're trying to brown in the oven. Also a good way to add veggies like sweet potato and eggplant that like to soak up oil to a stir-fry - just spray lightly directly onto the veggies before putting them in the skillet.

If you like tacos, which I do, whole-grain tortillas are pretty much a no-brainer. These ones are called Tumaro's. They have  a taste and texture like ordinary flour tortillas, except better.

I read on another site (and promptly forgot where I found it, so I can't credit it) a tip for using left-over tortillas. Now, I am a great waster of tortillas. Tortillas come in packages of 10, 12 or 20, they only stay fresh for a couple of weeks, and my husband and I generally only eat four or so before they get stale. Here's how to use those extra ones:

Cut the tortillas into 8 slices, like a pizza. Mist both sides with oil and arrange on a baking sheet. Top with a little salt.  Bake at 400 degrees for 5 minutes, then flip them and cook a couple minutes longer to brown the other side. Watch carefully because these go from not done to burnt quickly. You now have healthy low-fat whole grain baked tortilla chips, and your stale tortillas have a new lease on life.

Stuff that doesn't work:

Stock.

Now, I am the laziest cook in the world, but not even I can resign myself to the amount of sodium that comes in store-bought stock. On the other hand, I'm totally not up for any of the stock recipes I found online. Most claim to be "thrifty," then explain how you should purchase ten dollars worth of vegetables to boil with your bones, use your stove for 12 hours, then discard the vegetables, to get stock that you could buy in a can for 50 cents. If I have carrots and celery and bones, I'm going to eat the carrots and celery and throw the bones away, not the other way around!  And spending 12 hours reducing bones to gelatin doesn't strike me as a carbon-neutral use of my stove, much less my time. 

Anyone know a good brand of store-bought stock, or have a recipe which doesn't involve heating the kitchen for 12 hours and wasting good veggies?