Red Lentils with Kale and Green Beans

Dinner last night was inspired by all of the green vegetables that I had in my fridge and needed to use up. I started out by making the red lentils, thinking that this would be easy enough to do while I prepared everything else. Boy was I wrong! I took a large stock pot and added a cup of the lentils along with 3 cups of water and by the time it started boiling, I had water everywhere. So, as my daughter was watching me run to the stove to figure out what was happening and try to prevent the water from spreading anywhere else, I realized that maybe dinner was going to prove to be a bit more difficult than I imagined. When I had the mess finally cleaned up, I added more liquid to the pan (since well it had all overflowed the pot that I had it in, did I mention I was using a really big pot for this?), lowered the heat, placed the lid partially on top and again tried to start with the rest of my meal. Before I knew it water was everywhere again! This time Dylan said, "Mom, you sure you want to make dinner tonight?", but after the lentils being so overly difficult I was determined to get it figured out and put a tasty meal on the table.  I proceeded with the clean up, added a bit more water to the pot and lowered the heat to a medium-low. This seemed to be the key.
Once I had the lentils finally cooking like they were supposed to, I moved onto the kale.  To another large pot I added chopped onion, garlic scapes and red bell pepper with some olive oil. I sauteed this until tender and added chopped kale, two lemon slices, salt, pepper and fresh thyme sprigs to the pot. Once the kale was starting to wilt I added a cup of vegetable broth and a cup of broccoli. I allowed this to simmer until the broccoli was cooked through, but still bright green. Next I added half a cup of fresh corn kernels and half a cup of chopped spinach. This continued to cook until the spinach was wilted.

For the green beans, I simply placed them in a small pot of boiling water for about 5 minutes. Just to soften them a bit and get them warmed through completely. I mixed them with a lemon hazelnut butter (lemon zest, finely chopped hazelnuts and butter) and sprinkled additional coarsely chopped hazelnuts on top.

Even though things didn't start out as easy as I had planned, everything else went quite smooth and turned out really tasty, just like I was hoping it would. I've also managed to make a lentil lover out of my daughter even if I'm still trying to acquire a taste for them (but don't tell her that!).