Meatless Monday Meal - Lentil Loaf and Swiss Chard

Even though every day has become Meatless Monday around here, I still think it can't hurt to make the point that if everybody just cut meat out for one day a week the planet (and their bodies) would be better off.

Alrighty, so enough preaching and onto food, glorious food. Like I said before I'm on a mission to cut costs on all fronts this month, starting with the food bill. A trip to the grocery store yesterday set me back a whole $16.81 and I intend to make this go as far as possible (ok, I already had a full pantry and items in the fridge).

One blog I have turned to time and again for excellent, easy and low-cost vegan recipes is My Vegan Cookbook. Yesterday I craved his lentil loaf and here it is.. only I switched green pepper for yellow (for some reason green peppers were twice the price of red, yellow and orange ones.. odd). I also nixed the salt for some Mrs. Dash garlic & herb since I'm watching my sodium intake.

(Hmm.. that doesn't look so great like that.. but it is!)

I'm also trying to get more greenery in my diet so I sautéd up a side of swiss chard with some chopped onion and red pepper left from the lentil loaf recipe, added some garlic, a dash each of olive oil and balsalmic vinegar and a pinch of sea salt.

My pan runneth over:

And the final outcome:

Looking forward to leftovers for lunch :-)