Hey y’all! My upcoming posts will be sporadic and there will be a span of several weeks where I will not be posting. On March 1 I awoke to severe, radiating, spasming pain down my left arm. It wouldn’t stop. Mr. FBBQ had to rush me to the emergency room. Turns out I herniated my C6-C7 vertebrae. And it is not going to be a quick fix. I spent an entire week basically unable to move much, unable to get comfortable in any position, and struggling emotionally and mentally. I am a very active person. It was so difficult to not be able to do anything. We saw a spine specialist after a week. He sent me for an MRI and scheduled me for a week out to go over the results. Another week without making any progress?!?!?! No way. I requested physical therapy, which my doctor agreed to. I started immediately. It was a bit of a relief to be doing something towards fixing this. Everything we read online said that usually this is fixed by surgery. This was confirmed when we met with the spine doctor that next Monday. But I felt rushed and, even though I was still in pain and had numbness and tingling in my fingers, I wasn’t ready to jump right to surgery. We decided to get a second opinion. I liked the second doctor so much better than the first. He took the time to explain things to us and let us know what to expect. He scheduled me for surgery about a month out. Meanwhile, I will continue the PT and start prepping myself and the house for my recovery. After the surgery I will be in a neck brace for anywhere up to 12 weeks. Mr. FBBQ is going to have to help out a lot. I won’t be able to drive for 2 weeks. Luckily, they want me walking so I will be doing a lot of that. I am hoping to be back to cooking and running and living life somewhat normally by June. Wish me luck!!!
Lets get to the food! We need some brown rice (or couscous or quinoa), vegetable broth, bell peppers, sweet potatoes, cilantro, an onion, garlic, diced tomatoes, tomato paste, red lentils, cumin, coriander, and ground ginger. Start cooking the rice in the vegetable broth because it’ll take a while.
Dice up the peppers and onions and chop up the garlic. Cook them on the stovetop.
Cut up the sweet potatoes and steam them. I forgot to put water in the base of the steamer. Oops. So, they were the last thing to cook. At this point I also rinsed and cooked the lentils.
Once the peppers, onion, and garlic are cooked, add some tomato paste and the diced tomatoes to the mix. Add the spices. Stir everything together and keep it warm.
The rice is the base for this dish.
Top with the cooked lentils.
Top with the peppers/onions/garlic/tomatoes.
Add the sweet potatoes.
Garnish with a little cilantro and you are ready to eat!! I really enjoyed this dish. I made so much I had to share with our wonderful neighbors and my friend Jen!