One of our favorite, quickest, and easiest meals is the Vegetarian Sloppy Joe. We cheat and use Simply Organic sloppy joe mix instead of making the sloppy joe flavor from scratch, but remember, this is so we can have a quick, easy meal on a night we might otherwise just give in and go out to eat!

Here's the process:

1. Sort and rinse a pound bag of brown lentils. Put them in a pot with water, heat to a boil and simmer for about 15 minutes or until mostly soft. (Make sure you check after 10 minutes or so to make sure that you don't run out of water in your pot.) Once the lentils are basically finished, strain the water from the lentils and return the lentils to the pot.


2. Pour the sloppy joe mix into 1/4 cup water and stir until well blended.


3. Add your seasoning liquid plus several tablespoonfuls of tomato paste to your lentils and let simmer for another 10 or 15 minutes or until most of the water is boiled out, stirring occasionally.


4. Serve on hamburger buns or regular bread. Add sliced cheddar cheese, slices of white onion or pickles as a condiment to the sandwiches. Serve with a few chips or a pickle on the side for a nice crunchy contrast.

This makes enough for 6 servings with plenty left over for freezing for even quicker (how is that possible!) meals.

Every so often we'll bring you a review of some of our favorite vegetarian cookbooks to help you with your meatless options. First up, we wanted to highlight Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison, a book that is like the Joy of Cooking for vegetarians. If you're struggling to find a simple vegetarian recipe for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, this cookbook is a standard for your shelf. We have a decent collection of cookbooks - some of them focus on specific cuisines, some of them are vegan, some for desserts (okay, okay, a bunch for desserts), and some are from specific vegetarian or vegan restaurants we've loved. This cookbook is probably one of the most used of them all. The recipes are simple to cook but tasty and the ingredients can be easily found even in our small town with its standard, non-foodie grocery stores. Since it's a basics cookbook, she covers sauces and condiments, appetizers, sandwiches, salads, soups and stews, casseroles, beans, veggies, pastas, pies, grains, eggs, soy, breakfast, breads, and desserts. Whew!

Here's a very simple recipe that is a hit with everyone in our family:

Lentils and Rice with Fried Onions (Mujadarrah)

Ingredients
6 tablespoons olive oil
1 very large onion, sliced into rounds 1/4 inch thick (we like the onions so much that we usually do 2 onions)
1 1/4 cups green or brown lentils, sorted and rinsed
salt and pepper
3/4 cup white or brown long-grain rice

Directions: Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring frequently, until it's a rich, dark brown, about 12 minutes. Meanwhile, put the lentils in a saucepan with 1 quart water and 1 teaspoon salt. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 15 minutes. Add the rice, plenty of pepper, and, if needed, additional water to cover. Cover and cook over low heat until the rice is done, about 15 minutes. Stir in half the onions, then cover and let stand off the heat for 5 minutes. Spoon the lentil-rice mixture onto plates or a platter and cover with the remaining onions.

Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone is a great kitchen resource featuring a wide variety of dishes and food categories. We highly recommend it!

School is starting soon so we thought we'd throw out some ideas for packing quick, healthy Meatless Monday lunches for the kiddos. If you read our blogs regularly, you'll know that we unschool Z so we don't pack lunches daily. But we have times during the summer when she goes to summer day camp, and during the spring, Z and I had a weekly picnic between my gym class and Z's Kindermusik class.

Some of our favorite things to pack:

• Carrot sticks with hummus or pita triangles


• Fruit like cherries, blackberries, grapes, sliced apples with cinnamon, or other finger-sized fruits


• Cherry tomatoes or steamed broccoli


• Wasa Crackers and cheese


• A green smoothie (our favorite recipe - makes three servings - 1 banana, 8 oz frozen pineapple, and a heaping cup of spinach - dilute with water or coconut milk, blend.)


• A nut-butter and jelly or banana sandwich (if your school is peanut free try something like soynut butter)


• Mock tuna salad on bread, pita, or crackers


• Ants on a log


• Dried fruit and nut mix (we make our own based on what we have in the pantry)


• Cheese stick


• Granola bar


• Fruit leathers (we love the Fruitabu organic fruit leathers)

We usually pack a combination of items that offer a balance of fruits, veggies and proteins. We usually include a small treat like animal crackers or a square of fair trade chocolate for dessert. Z's not big on leftovers and there's rarely a place to heat them up so we don't usually include leftovers in our lunchboxes anymore - but make sure if you do, you include a ceramic plate for reheating!

If you have five extra minutes while you're packing your child's lunch, do something to make the lunch fun - cut the sandwich or bread slices into fun shapes using cookie cutters (you can do this with slices of cheese or fruit leathers too), include a quick handwritten note, make a portion of the lunch DIY or toss a few chocolate chips into the fruit and nut mix.

Tell us, what are your kids' favorite lunches? Also, what would you like us to address in future Meatless Monday posts?

And if you're looking for a good lunch box, check out either the PlanetBox or the Laptop Lunch kit or our other suggestions in the ZRecs Guide for Safer Children's Products.