First of all, I would like to thank you everyone for the support of “Easy Healthy Recipe Wednesday”. There were over 100 views and I was SHOCKED. I will continue to post better and tastier easy, affordable and healthy recipes. THANK YOU SO MUCH EVERYONE.

In today’s “Easy Healthy Recipe Thursday”, we will be making a vegetarian dish that is best served for lunch. This dish is inspired by the cookbook called Culinary Tea by Cynthia Gold and Lise Stern. It would be very cool to make a dish using tea since tea is a very popular drink. In addition, for every lunch dish that are introduced in “Easy Healthy Recipe Wednesday and Thursday”, we aim for $3 CAN per serving maximum. Here is the recipe and cost of ingredients:

4 cups water ($0.50 CAN)

4.5 teaspoons English Breakfast tea leaves ($0.22 CAN; if you do not have any black tea leaves, you can use 5 black tea bags)

2 cups brown lentils, rinsed ($1.40 CAN)

3 cups fresh tomatoed, diced ($1.50 CAN)

0.25 teaspoons salt ($0.50 CAN)

0.25 teaspoons fresh ground black pepper ($0.50 CAN)

2 tablespoons chive, minced plus some for garnish ($0.50 CAN)

1) Boil water in a pot over high heat. Turn off heat and pour tea leaves/tea bags into the water and let the tea steep for at least 5 minutes with pot covered.

2) Strain the water into another pot after 5 minutes and discard tea leaves/tea bags. Add the lentils and tomatoes and bring to a boil over high heat.

3) Lower the heat when mixture boils. Uncover the pot and let the mixture simmer until most of the liquid is absorbed and the lentil are firm but tender. This takes about 25 minutes.

4) When the lentils are ready, turn off heat, cover the pot and let the mixture rest for about 10 minutes. All the liquid should be absorbed at this point.

5) Stir in the salt, pepper and chives after resting and serve warm.

And voila! So the total cost to make this dish is $5.12 CAN. That means it costs $0.64 CAN per serving. WOW! Can lunch be any cheaper?

Overall, this dish is very nutritious because lentils help to reduce blood cholesterol (lentils contain high levels of soluble fiber), contain low no fat, slow down digestion and stabilize blood sugar levels. If you want this dish to have some kick, you can use pepper flakes (they do not cost that much).

Do you love lentils? Do you love cooking with tea? What do you usually have lentils with? Post your comments below. Till next time!

P.S. The prices were as of Tuesday, April 1, 2014 at No Frills.