Make a dish using a type of bean or legume.

“A girl’s gotta eat, right? I resorted to whatever was in my mini food pantry — a few canned items, some rice, and a small bag of Goya green lentil beans. I wasn’t much of a cook, so I looked up a recipe online. I had to improvise because I didn’t have all the ingredients in the recipe or even a loaf pan, to be honest. 90 minutes later, I had my first lentil loaf. It was terrible. Yet, it was satisfying because I had made it with my own two hands and less than $1.50 in ingredients.”

“Everything was going well and about an hour in, I began to check the texture of the peas to determine the remaining time left for them to cook and noticed they were still very hard. My thought, ”No problem”. I added more water, stirred the stew and went back to making my cornbread. About 45 minutes later, it was time to check the peas again and of course, they were still very hard. [...] They boiled over like lava not once or twice but three times! Each time I cleaned up after them thinking that was it and a few minutes later, they boiled over again! You know I was mad. [...] Once it was time to eat, I made myself a bowlful of the Split Pea Soup and a side of cornbread and sat down to enjoy my soup but that feeling didn’t last long. As I began eating the soup I noticed that there were two textures in the soup, mushy (the peas that had been obliterated during the lava flow) and crunchy. Not completely hard but they definitely had a bite to them. I was so disappointed.”

“Therefore when Joe Beef’s Lentils Like Baked Beans recipe was featured on Food52, and I saw the primary ingredient was red lentils, I decided to try it. I did make some changes. I did not use bacon. No explanation needed, I think. Rather than cooking the lentils on the stove, I cooked them in a slow cooker, which thanks to Shari Burke’s encouragement has become my favorite little appliance. I just tossed everything into the slow cooker, let it come to boil on high, and then turned it down to low so that it could simmer until supper time. [...] The results? The lentils did taste a little baked beans, although nobody would ever confuse the two. “Pretty good,” Clif said, going back for seconds. Perhaps not company good—somehow the dish lacked the pizazz I look for when cooking for a gathering—but certainly good enough for a Tuesday night supper. And good enough to make again.”