Butternut Squash and Sweet Potatoes with Lentil-Brown Rice and Flame Roasted Corn

Today, I wondered how my rice cooker would do if I tried including lentils with rice. In my experiment, I put in 1 cup brown rice, 1/2 cup red lentils, 2 1/2 cups water, a vegan bouillon cube, six cardamom pods (first pressed so they were broken), a pinch of turmeric, and a few pinches of ground roasted cumin, then let the rice cooker go on the brown rice setting; the cooker took 1 hour 25 minutes.

While the rice was cooking, I cut half of a red onion into large chunks, maybe 3/4" square, and started sauteeing them over medium-high heat just a minute or two, then added a ten ounce bag of frozen cubed butternut squash and about half of a ten ounce bag of frozen cubed sweet potato. I reduced the heat to medium, covered the pan, and let it cook for about 4 minutes. I then uncovered the pan, stirred and flipped the squash and potato, and covered again, cooking for another 5 minutes or so.

I also served corn, roasted over an open flame, then stripped and mixed with Earth Balance margarine, salt, and fresh lemon juice. Dinner turned out well! The rice was quite interesting; I've never had such firm rice that stuck together, like a porridge. It worked, but were I to do it again, I would add 3 or 3 1/4 cups of water instead of 2 1/2 cups.

Yesterday was the opening night of an exhibit of Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep photography! I am a proud participating professional photographer, and was touched to have several of my images exhibited, including parents of a child I had photographed. After the exhibit, we went out to eat pizza.