Lentil Sliders with Sesame Sauce

 I took the Christmas tree down yesterday and put away all the decorations. As soon as the holiday is over I like to box up all the decorations and get back to normal. I have always been like this. Growing-up my mother would keep our tree up until well into January and it would drive me nuts. I like to get things over with and move on, Christmas is one of those things. Don't get me wrong I like Christmas, but all the dust from the decorations and the lack of space from the Christmas tree drives me nuts. So as soon as Christmas is over I get up the next day and put everything away. My living room is now back to the state that it the rest of the year and I am happy and content. I have survived another Christmas and things can start settling into the cold winter months ahead. Winter to me always means beans. I cook with beans a lot in the winter, I find them filling and comforting when the weather is cold and depressing. Last week I tried a new recipe for Lentil Sliders with Sesame Sauce from the January issue of Parents magazine.

This recipe has 12 ingredients. It takes 1 hour of total time, 10 minutes of which is active and makes 8 sliders. I did have to go to multiple stores to find all the ingredients, but that is normal when I am looking for tahini. Be very careful when cooking these sliders, they have a tendency to burn if you follow the amount of oil in the recipe. Watch the sliders very carefully and add more oil if necessary. I served my husband and kids portions with pita, but I ate mine with just the sauce since I can't eat gluten. For the lemon juice I used fresh squeezed, the taste is better and lemons are inexpensive. I followed the remainder of the recipe as written.

The sauce in this recipe was too sweet. I think it would be better if the honey was eliminated or there was a touch of crushed red pepper. As the recipe is written the sauce is just too mild and sweet. The sliders on the other hand were delicious and everyone in my family enjoyed them. My husband thought that they were actually better the way that I ate them without the pita.

This recipe is currently not available online, but can be found in the January 2013 issue of Parents magazine.

Chicken Shawarma

My two kids and I love sandwiches. I make homemade bread weekly and every week my kids and I fight over sandwich ingredients. We all have a major peanut butter craving and I am not afraid to say that peanut butter is probably one of my favorite foods. I have tried giving it up over the years, but I always go back. My peanut butter obsession seems to go back to when I was little and we had very little money. We had to stand in the line at the church food line and the best part of the experience was the peanut butter. It came in huge jars and I loved it. I would literally eat it out of the jar with a spoon, sometimes actually squirting honey into the jar to combine and eat. Now that I'm older, while I still love peanut butter I have forced myself to branch out and try new sandwich combinations. One of my favorite sandwich fillings is grilled chicken, so I was very excited when I saw a recipe for Chicken Shawarma in the March/April issue of Eating Well magazine.

This recipe has 13 ingredients. It takes a total of 45 minutes, all of which is active and makes 4 servings. I had no problems finding any of the ingredients and made no ingredient modifications. I chose to use whole wheat pita bread, I try to use whole wheat whenever possible. I found a beautiful tomato at the farmer's market which worked perfectly for this recipe. Since I used an indoor grill my total grilling time was closer to 4 minutes per side. I weighed out my chicken breast to ensure proper amounts, I encourage anyone that doesn't have a food scale to buy one. They really are worth the money and can make a huge difference in recipes! Normally I would have used fresh lemon juice, but I completely forgot to buy lemons, so I used bottled instead. I followed the remainder of the recipe as written.

My three-year-old loved these sandwiches. I wasn't sure if he would eat the sauce or turn up his nose, but he ate his whole serving. At first I thought that the chicken was too salty, but once the sauce was added to the sandwich the taste was perfect. The recipe states that it makes four servings, but my family eats a lot of meat so this dish made more like 3 servings. I would suggest doubling the recipe if you have a meat eating family like I do or if you want leftovers. Overall, a popular new sandwich recipe in my house.

For the recipe go to Chicken Shawarma.