while living with vegan housemates who are not the whole-foods type of vegans (neither the concept nor the store), I've been using TVP, aka soy protein isolate granules, in a pasta w/red sauce that I make pretty frequently. I have nothing against it although it's an ultraprocessed ingredient. but it was unavailable at the store down the street from where I'm staying at the moment, so I'm going to try red lentils in my pasta w/red sauce instead.
the reason for doing this at all is because I have poor control of my blood sugar: if I eat a meal too high in carbs without sufficient protein and/or fat, I *will* have a blood sugar crash 2 to 3 hours later.
back when I did 23andme (I know; it was years ago) it even identified some blood sugar variant of unknown significance... I should look into my Promethease report and see if there's any new research. I definitely inherited this from my mother.
Goo Truther 
food
@scattergather have the lentils been pre-cooked? They might need extra soak/boil time first compared to the processed soy
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@thufie update, with about 25 min of simmering I would say about 90% of the lentils were more cooked than "al dente" ... I make a dal with red & green lentils which goes for 40-45 minutes and the red ones more or less dissolve in that. so, I may up the simmer time on red pasta sauce with lentils a little bit, I don't want any al dente ones in such a sauce.
I also hear there's such a thing as lentil-based vegan bolognese, gonna have to investigate that!
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@thufie nope, but I believe they'll be okay because they're red lentils, so they've been hulled and are just the inner part of the seed.
I looked up a couple recipes which called for simmering for 20-25 minutes, which is about what I do anyway, and also a how to cook plain red lentils recipe which called for even less time.
fingers crossed! 🤞 I will likely be trying this in just a few hours here