Allspice recipe and Lentils & rice epic fail

Lets be clear, I was trying to follow a recipe posted on the Beans and rice website at my church.  It was all good, until it wasn’t.  I’m pretty sure I used WAY too many lentils.  They just looked so pretty!  I don’t know that I’ve ever cooked lentils like this before, but they were on sale weeks ago, so I bought them thinking the perfect recipe would show up shortly.  One cool thing that came out of all this was that I learned how to make allspice.  I didn’t have any, so I googled it and its just cinnamon, nutmeg & ground cloves.  I had fun pulling out my mortar & pestle to grind up the cloves.   After that, things went south quickly.  It was not even close to flavorful.  Thyme is such a subtle spice, so I added a ton more and it still didn’t help.  Indian dishes are typically really flavorful, and this just didn’t!  So I tried to add turmeric and chili powder, but it just never came together.  It ultimately turned into a weird flavorless lentil paste that I could only eat a couple of bites of, lololol!  I keep one meal on hand at all times: grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.  It came to our rescue that night.  So instead of going to skyline (which I was 2 seconds from doing), we still ate cheaply.

Looks easy enough, right?

Lentils go in

Using my mortar & pestle to grind cloves

The recipe for allspice: nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves!

Sad, sad, lentil and rice paste?!  EEK!

Thank you God for our grilled cheese and tomato soup stash.  Saved the day!!!