An Ugly, Easy, Delicious Dinner Salad

So this is not the prettiest thing I've ever put on a plate, but it's insanely easy to pull together and a great healthy, weeknight dinner.

All the ingredients in this lentil salad can be lovely prepared from scratch, however, you can get great results from jarred, bagged and canned ingredients. It could also be much prettier served over or alongside a green salad.

Easy Lentil Salad (as a main course for two)

• 2 cups of cooked lentils (make your own or use the precooked bagged ones from Trader Joe's)
• 1/3 cup of chopped roasted red and/or yellow peppers
• 1/3 cup of chopped hearts of palm or artichoke hearts
• handful of parsley, chopped
• 1 lemon
• olive oil
• salt and pepper

Gently mix the lentils, peppers, hearts of palm (or artichoke hearts) and parsley together. Squeeze the juice of one lemon over the salad and drizzle the salad with olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Gently stir everything together.

Wow, tough huh? Even better, it tastes great after a night in the fridge, so it's a great make ahead for picnics, plane trips, and other such events.

Serve this with nice bread and a few pieces of cheese, or a hardboiled egg, or the aforementioned green salad. Vary the herbs and vegetable mix-ins to taste (another nice option is chopped beets and celery with chopped dill and sherry vinegar).