Can we just talk about lentils for a minute? Lentils are so awesome.

For instance, lentils will save you when you have practically no food in the house, but do have half a bottle of chardonnay. This, along with an onion, a couple of bay leaves, and some broth cobbled together from frozen scraps, was sufficient to make a pot of lentils in white wine. Both my dinner and three days' worth of lunches were saved. In conclusion, you'd better have some lentils hanging around in the freezer if you know what's good for you.

I actually went straight to the land of cookbooks for this one: it's Deborah Madison's lentils in red wine straight from The Savory Way. Obviously, we had white instead of red wine. We even had white wine vinegar to punch it up on dismount. I here report that the switch served us admirably.

Then there was kale steamed over the pot, and a pan of stuffing which failed pretty thoroughly into a soggy mess. Let us never mention it again.

The presentation was pretty great, though. It reminds me of a huge platter of Ethiopian goodness. Mmm, Ethiopian goodness. We're going to need some of that in the near future.