I have about 200 photos from the first soccer games this weekend still on my camera that need to be downloaded, edited and backed up. And I have a sticky note with blog post ideas and promises that I’ve made – like “how I put the supercapes together’ (I promise it is coming, Carey!) and all sorts of other “when I get around to its” that I could be writing.

But here is one that is pretty easy and I can cross off my to do list right now – the recipe for the Lentil Salad that I’ve been raving about almost every day for lunch. Although I guess now that fall is upon us, most of my friends and family are looking for a lentil soup recipe!

At any rate, my friend Diane introduced me to this lentil salad from Nicole’s – the little french bistro in South Pasadena. It was delicious – but expensive – so I’ve been trying to perfect the salad at home. It is close…so very close!

I use the already cooked lentils from the refrigerator section at Trader Joe’s. I have some dried lentils in the pantry, but haven’t attempted to soak, rinse, cook them yet.

For the record, they are awesome right out of the package…and look! They are really good for you, too!

They have a whole 8g of fiber for 1 serving! Nice.

But to make them even tastier, and more like the Nicole’s salad, you will also need:

A little olive oil, parsley, lemon, scallions (I only had little green onions on this day – also works!), salt & pepper.

Chop the onion ( I used one green onion), squeeze the juice of one lemon, chop up a little-ish bunch of parsley, give one round dash of olive oil (once around the medium-sized bowl), and mix it all up with the lentils. Salt and pepper to taste and stick it in the fridge for salads for the week.

Okay, well it has never lasted me an entire week of lunches. It is about three days (tops!) worth of lunch for me, unless one of those days happens to be a very hard workout day. Then I get two days out of my bowl. But my bowl of lentil salad costs 1/4 of what Nicole’s is charging.

Budget friendly AND delicious!