i need your kid friendly lentil ideas. i love lentil soup with chicken broth and veggies, but even with sausage in it my kids don't.
anyone have any luck with this? or other bean ideas would be great too. we're not vegetarian, but everyone needs more beans/lentils. plus they are the cheapest thing in the store.

Do they like spicy things? We use spicy chili beans in a lot of meals (stuffed peppers - which i don't actually STUFF, just cook the pepper pieces in chunks so we have a pile of red/yellow/orange and green pepper chunks and the "filling" is spicy chili beans, a LOT of sauteed matchstick carrots and onions, two pieces of hot italian turkey sausage browned into crumbles, some spanish rice and some sweet corn all mixed up. I try to cram more veggies in that than the rice/sausage ... black beans and spicy chili beans are used in burrito bowls - all the stuff added on top of lettuce and diced tomatoes and onions ... I'm no good for lentil ideas - we just have regular ole lentil soup I'm looking forward to seeing other posts on this, too - good question!~

How about lentil sloppy joes?
http://vegweb.com/index.php?PHPSESSI...&topic=29868.0

Lentil loaf - (like meat loaf)
http://vegetarian.about.com/od/maind...lentilloaf.htm

I found this, which are lentil burgers that are supposedly kid friendly
http://www.food.com/recipe/lentil-gr...will-eat-78029

i'm liking the ideas so far! dad loooves spicy. the kids need it toned down a bit, but a little for flavor is ok. sometimes they like my store bought veggie burgers. so there's a good chance the kids will like those, although i'll be doing it without a food processor. alot of those recipes use one. the peppers...my oldest son hates any kind of peppers, but the other 2 kids love them.` i could still make it though. if i only made things that were his fav. he would still hate spagetti lol. he's not a fan of tomatoes either. but he'll get those veggies anyway
i snuck some lentils in wild and brown rice yesterday. 2 of my kids and myself ate it as an after school snack. go whole grains lol.
i haven't made curry in ages. i love it, but the kids got tired of it. we could try making cury with lots of veggies, chicken, and lentils thrown in. i love how curry makes everything taste good. or chick peas those would be good too. or very easily a meatless meal.

i just looked at the sloppy joes recipe. very interesting i hadn't thought about that. they've actually never had sloppy joes, well at home anyway. we don't eat beef. haven't since they were babies. they might really like that one, maybe even their dad lol.

Also - I just thought of this - i love this young woman's healthy living/eating blog and remembered she'd posted a recipe awhile ago that I wanted to try - for chickpeas - as a snack/treat - cinnamon peanut butter chickpeas. On this page, scroll down through her dinner to get to the recipe at the bottom ... looks easy to modify.

http://www.pbfingers.com/2010/06/16/odd-combo/

She posts about three of her meals each day (she's a highly (!!) active person and has some great ideas for adding in protein, etc.) Fun and very positive, overall.

If you are open to spiced stuff for the kids, I'd recommend looking for some ethiopian lentil recipes.
This is from a blog of a mom who tries to make her stuff kid friendly

http://fatfreevegan.com/blog/2010/03...n-lentil-stew/
http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2006/04...entil-and.html

And I've been really really wanting to make this recipe for a while
http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2009/10...l-squares.html

I put black beans in my spaghetti sauce, a good amount, and my friend's six and nine year old love it.