Please, sir, I want some more

Italian Sausage and Lentil Stew – L’unico, originally uploaded by avlxyz.

Tonight for dinner I made a fabulous sausage stew.

I take no credit for the recipe. It comes from Jacques Pepin’s The Short-Cut Cook: Make Simple Meals with Surprisingly Little Effort. (My mom had my copy signed by the great man himself!) It included hot Italian sausage, kidney beans, ground cumin, and greens — the recipe called for Swiss chard I think, but suggested substituting spinach, which is what I used.

There was also some jalepeno in the recipe, and for once I’d remembered to buy it. I minced it before adding to the stew, and since then I’ve burned my eyes and face a couple of times by touching them with pepper-coated fingers.

I made this fabulous stew, and I ate a healthy portion of it, along with some toasted whole wheat bread.

That was about an hour ago, and right now my stomach is growling in hunger. How can this be? I had fiber, some fats, and greens and protein and everything. I should be full. Fulfilled with food! My own body is frustrating my attempts to live healthier in 2008.

(I apologize that the photo is not of the actual stew that I ate. I hadn’t planned to blog about this, and the remaining stew is nicely packed away in the fridge and freezer already. This lovely Flickr-sourced photo seemed to me to capture the essentials of my hearty stew, despite having lentils where the kidney beans should be, and carrots instead of spinach. OK, so it doesn’t cover it at all, but it looks mighty tasty, doesn’t it?)