German Lentil Soup and Sausage with Onions

I proposed to my wife that I make one dish every week and do some research ahead of time, but we sort of ran out of time last week (now several weeks! - sorry about the late post) and she suggested this dish because it is “easy”. My cooking skills fall somewhere between horrible and non-existent with the exception of spaghetti (it’s damn good!) so this was not “easy”.  Also, I’m neurotic and get stressed out easily so I ending up pacing around the kitchen muttering a bunch of expletives to myself.  Honestly, I probably looked and sounded like a crazy person half way through the preparation.  In the future, my focus will be on quick meals – about a half hour or less- since honestly I don’t like spending this much time preparing dinner.

By the way that’s not me above- way too calm.

German Lentil Soup - This serves 6!

• 8 oz brown lentils
• 1 tbsp sunflower oil - We used olive oil
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1 leek, finely chopped
• 1 carrot finely diced (seriously what’s the difference between chopped and diced)
• 2 celery sticks chopped
• 4 oz. of bacon
• 2 bay leaves
• 6 ¼ cups water
• 2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
• 8 oz. frankfurter sliced
• salt and pepper

So I chopped up all the vegetables – carrots, leeks, celery onions, parsley- with the grace of a bull in a china shop – luckily no fingers were lost.  Onions make you cry a lot,  I mean a lot.  However, like most people I survived and all the vegetables were chopped, 3 cups of water was added instead of 6 ¼ since the lentils had already been soaked, and the lentils were dumped into the iron skillet and put into a boil for 45 minutes.     

Sausage With Onions - serves 4 to 5

• 3 tbls butter or margarine - Use butter, always butter
• 2 pounds pork sausage links
• 4 large onions sliced - really, 4 onions.  I used 1 since I was tired of sobbing but this probably could've used a 2nd one.
• 2 cups dry white wine - Germans really love wine in their food - no complaining:).

The second part of my dish was Sausage with Onions.  However, due to anxiety with all the ingredients in the above dish, I somehow mixed up hot dogs which were supposed to be used for the German Lentil Soup for sausage and ending up frying them out of order.  Not a big deal to fix, but the wife was not happy because she said she told me this but I wasn’t paying attention - story of our lives.  This was actually super easy if the selective listening hadn’t kicked in.  Really just melt the butter on the skillet, add the sausages to brown and then remove them to a plate.  Place the onions back into the skillet and saute them for a couple minutes and throw the white wine in and let simmer for 10 mins.  Once done grab a baking dish and place the sausages on top of the onions.  Throw into the oven at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes (30 minutes if you do the full recipe).  

Eventually, the lentils finished steaming and the sausage with onions baked and we had a happy household dinner – minus the 3 year old who doesn’t eat anything but 4th of July food.  My wife even said it was “pretty good.”  Personally, I thought it was a pretty solid meal too!