Came home around 18:00 and did about an hour's worth of lawn work before heading out on my bike to the SFW supermarket about two miles away. Filled up my bike bag with all the necessary veggies and stock and bought a new spare tire at the bike store while I was up that way.

This evening's experiment was Mediterranean Vegetable and Lentil Salad from a recipe I discovered before leaving work on nutritious-cooking.com.

I roast chopped tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and eggplant in the oven with a olive oil and balsamic toss, then boiled down a vegetable stock around a cup of lentils. Once everything was cooked I combined everything in a bowl with goat cheese and chopped up basil leaves.

The cooking process went very well, and was pretty simple, but the end result left something to be desired. The lentils really dominated the salad and two cups of diced veggies didn't really hold up against the stock-soaked beans. It said it made six portions, but I ate half in a single sitting and was left with a mushy set of lentils at the bottom of the bowl.

I felt like I could have just as easily cooked up the vegetables in the skillet and saved myself a 350 degree oven and twenty minutes without losing a lot of the taste. If I try this again it'll be with half as much stock and lentils, and twice as much water so they're more of a base, and possibly some spices on the vegetables to bring out their flavor a little more.

I have enough of all the vegetables left to try this recipe again tomorrow. It was filling enough that I just might, and try my iron skillet method and some spices instead. That would bring the total cost to around $8 per meal. Still a bit high, probably buoyed up by the goat cheese and the stock, which didn't add all that much to the final product.

Putting the finishing touches on my daily checklist of goals. My weight and exercise routines are on there, but I've also added some items about concentration and total driving time to see if there are any trends to what I do during the day and how I feel by the end.

More about that tomorrow when I finally get it into a workable form.

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