Hello spring! Green lentil salad with roasted baby carrots

Fine, I admit I baked the shortbread twice last week and me and Frieda ate it all. Time for something a little healthier, right? This blog is called the Healthy & the Tasty for a reason: We never could or would stop eating cake. And why should we? Food has many functions: It connects people, it provides your body with nutrients and it makes you feel good. Being healthy should encompass all these factors.

A friend of mine has been trying to lose weight for almost all of his adult life, yet always unsuccessfully. Every diet or sports routine he tries shows great results in the beginning but then his old habits creep back in and he gains weight again. And he beats himself up for failing, once again. In the end, he feels miserable not only physically, but mentally, too.

Eating healthy needs to be fun.

Sounds familiar? It definitely does to me. The more I think about health, though, the more I believe that we have to find sustainable ways of leading a healthy life. Eating healthy needs to be fun. Eating healthy is about loving food. Eating healthy must be dialectical. Wait, what does that even mean? It means you must eat two batches of shortbread with your friends sometimes in order to enjoy a fresh lentil salad the other day. It means you must allow yourself to be lazy one day and to run a half marathon the other. Don’t beat yourself up. Don’t feel like you’ve failed and quit the experience altogether. Just give yourself a chance.

And maybe give this lentil salad a chance, too. I swear it’s delicious and detoxing! The salad dressing is made with orange zest and star anise (YUM, YUM, YUM). Oh, and have I mentioned that you put in caramelized hazelnuts? (Oh YEAH)

Green lentils, roasted carrots, caramelized hazelnuts and an orange-juice dressing

Ingredients:

• 250g lentils
• 500 ml water

• 10 small carrots
• 1 tsp coriander seeds, crushed
• 1 tsp cumin seeds, crushed
• 3 tbsp olive oil

• 100g hazelnuts
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 handful of rocket/arugula salad for each bowl

• zest and juice of 1 organic orange
• 1 whole star anise for grating
• sea salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

1. Soak the green lentils for an hour before you start cooking.
2. Preheat the oven on 180°C.
3. Rub the carrots with the crushed seeds, the olive oil and a bit of sea salt. Then put the carrots on a baking tray and roast them for 45 minutes.
4. Boil the water and let the lentils simmer for 20-30 minutes. They should still have a bite then. Don’t add salt to the boiling lentils or they will become mushy. Rinse and let chill, season with a bit of salt and pepper.
5. Meanwhile, roast the hazelnuts. When they start to brown add the sugar and toss the nuts in the hot frying pan for a minute to caramelize them. Set aside.
6. Next, zest the orange and squeeze it. Grate half of the star anise and add zest, sea salt and pepper to the orange juice. When the carrots are done, pour the oil of the baking tray into the salad dressing. If you like your dressing more sour, I suggest adding a bit of lemon juice or white vinegar.
7. Wash the rocket salad. Prepare each individual bowl with the five components: The lentils, the hazelnuts, the carrots, the dressing and the salad. Enjoy!

Tip: This recipe was inspired by two different dishes on veggies on the counter, an amazing vegan food blog you should definitely check out ❤