Allspice recipe AND my Lentils & rice epic fail

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.