You know when you want something warming and hearty but you don’t feel like soup or stew? Sometimes you wanna slurp on something and sometimes you don’t. Well, insert this lentil and beet dish! This totally did the trick for me on Saturday night. The combination of lentils, beet, spinach, sautéed onions, roasted eggplant all smothered in a tahini dressing and topped with dates, walnuts and sunflower seeds was explosive with flavour and warming comfort. I had worked all day and didn’t feel like exhausting any more effort. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good time-consuming, super extra and mess-making dinner, but sometimes my energy is too tapped out for that, y’know? Plus, I’ve been wanting to use up my dry legumes (if you caught my recent insta-story, you would know that I have huge bulk bags of dried legumes, like mung beans–thanks, Costco!) Legumes are an excellent source of protein and can easily replace your typical meat-heavy recipes. For example, lentils can replace beef in sheppards pie, tempeh (fermented soy beans) can replace your beef in a bolognese sauce and can also become tempeh “bacon” to replace the usual pork bacon.