After a very sunny day and a totally springlike week, the sky has suddenly gotten darker and a rain shower is about to burst. The day has turned into night and the rainstorm sounds scary and threatening.

I really enjoy those sudden weather outbursts in spring that completely change the scenery, the colours, the atmosphere.. I love it when a rainstorm bursts, then it weakens within an hour and the sky clears up again bringing this great feeling of serenity along with the wonderful scent of watered soil.

I’ve sat beside my kitchen window –my most beloved place in the kitchen- with a hot cup of coffee, observing the dark scenery in front of me and feeling safe and lucky for being inside the house! I’ve got my backdrops, my camera and wonderful ingredients. It can’t get any better or more colourful than that!

We’re in the heart of spring and in the beginning of Lent, and the list of vegetarian, Lenten dishes is long! The combinations are endless. Even though we love vegetables and legume and they’re always included in our menus, we honor them even more during this season!

Today’s recipe glorifies legumes. It’s a dish with many different kinds of colourful beans and veggies! Mixed legume salad! Combining different kinds of legumes with fresh vegetables is a great idea for a salad that I stumble across quite often lately. So I’ve decided to make the most colourful and healthiest cold salad!

My palette is extra colourful today. Red, brown and black lentils, mung beans, black, red and white beans, fava beans.. Just fantastic! You can choose any vegetable you like to play with. I picked some cherry tomatoes, colorful peppers, spring onions, caper, parsley.. As for my dressing, I personally prefer a plain lemon sauce for a fresher result.

This dish is a perfect option for this season and great to take with you at work. For a more complete meal, you can add some boiled black rice to your salad, a secret that is not so secret anymore. Legumes are a great source of protein but they lack one of the nine necessary amino acids for their protein to be equal to animal protein. You can find this amino acid in rice! So, by adding some rice to your salad you’ll be able to upgrade the nutritional value of plant protein.

Lentils are also a rich source of iron but their bioavailability is poor and the lemon sauce will help the organism absorb it. No ingredient is included in traditional recipes by chance. There’s endless wisdom behind those wonderful combinations of ingredients. The more we learn, the more we’ll benefit from them. It’s legume time!