Vegetarianizing Denmark

It occurred to me a couple weeks ago that, as proud as the Danes are of their national butter industry, and as delicious as the derivative "small cakes" (i.e., cookies) are, they don't quite constitute a balanced diet on their own. So, I set it upon myself to find some other delicious, veg-friendly, traditional Danish food with which to diversify our diet. So, as Andrea mentioned the other day, we've been eating a lot of potatoes.

But, at least within Denmark, Danish cuisine is known for a few other specialities. One that a fellow sees pretty well everywhere is smørrebrød, an open-faced sandwich with some sort of rustic (and dry!) bread, butter, meat (such as liver pate), a slice of Danish cheese, and perhaps a token vegetable or two. Supposedly it's quite filling, but I've never tried it myself.

Instead, I've designed a new and improved version, one that's probably even kosher. I won't describe exactly how it is created until the patent is approved, but you could probably reconstruct it from the picture to the right. The key insight is to replace the meat (uck!) with delicious little red lentils. And then, presto!, you have vegetarian, traditional Danish food!

Fortunately, we don't have any Danish readers, because I gather from my research colleagues that my claims here are kind of similar to inventing a new improved version of ice hockey that doesn't use sticks.  But at least now on some nights we eat more than just potatoes for dinner and cookies for dessert!