2024-10-01

Dal and naan: easy, simple home-cooked lunch

As someone who works from a tiny home, lives on a tiny budget and makes an effort to limit unnecessary driving, I have a diet that relies on home cooked food, much of it purchased in bulk. It's a fairly healthy and inexpensive diet that's easy to prepare. I am not a baker, not a cook, not a foodie. And yet, dammit, my meals are tasty! Lunch today: dal and naan.

Ingredients for the dal:
1 onion browned in a pot with a little oil
Then add in a few cups of water and 1 lb red lentils
With powdered spices: garlic, cayenne pepper, curry, ginger, salt. Bring it to a boil and simmer. 10 minutes of prep time, 20 minutes to cook.

Ingredients for the naan:

• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/8 tsp of salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/4 baking powder
• 1tbs oil, bit of water

Mix it up into a ball of dough that's not too sticky to handle adding a wee bit of flour as needed. Roll it out onto a countertop so that it looks like a very thin tortilla. Heat a cast iron skillet, add just a dollop of oil then put the naan on for a minute or so. When it starts to bubble up a bit and show any signs of getting smoky I flip it and do the other side. Prep time, 5 minutes, cook time 4 minutes for two naan.

Optional:

Rice. I choose between rice or Naan but a half cup of rice goes pretty good with the daal!

I've got bulk bags of spices and rice. It was cheapest to get 25lbs of red lentils but each 1lb in its own bag unfortunately. Still, the waste packaging is pretty minimal per meal. The pot of lentils equates to 5 two cup meals so once made I've got lunch set for 5 days.

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