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Daily meditation. Centering mindfully on time with my daughter.

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Daily meditation. Centering mindfully on time with my daughter.

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Vegan Dairy Free This Instant Pot Lentil Gumbo recipe is sponsored by my friends over at USA Pulses and Pulse Canada. Thank you for allowing me to talk about this caring real food company. Gluten Free
This vegan lentil gumbo recipe made quick and easy in the instant pot! A wholesome flavorful dinner that feeds a crowd. Rich in plant based protein, with the addition lentils, this gumbo is both filling and nourishing!

Hello friends. We are continuing with our nurturing November recipe focus today. That being said bring on the cozy comforting stews. Bring on the warming spices. Bring on a house filled with the aroma of something delicious cooking on the stove! Or in this case, Instant Pot Lentil Gumbo.

I will confess, I really did not know what cozy felt like until I moved to Utah. You see, Texas fall weather is usually in the 70s. So cozy is usually comfortable shorts weather. Moving to Utah really made me aware of a new kind of fall! As soon as November hit, the air turned brisk and the nights were much colder. My husband and I found ourselves craving some sort of chili or stew every night; especially a soup with a good deal of heat and spices. Let me just say this: a good bowl of stew will make you sleep like a baby.

Which brings me to my next point, referring to nurturing November of course! Enjoying the seasons best food in a healthier way. Nurturing mind, body, and soul.

This Instant Pot Lentil Gumbo will do just that! It's made quick, healthy, and grain free. I never knew how much I could love a gumbo recipe until I made it with lentils, and in the instant pot! It took all of 10 minutes and is packed full of hearty flavor and nutrition. It's like MAGIC!

The key ingredient? Of course, lentils. Also known as pulses. Pulses are part of the legume family! But the term "pulse" refers only to the dried seed portion of the legume.

DRY PEAS, EDIBLE BEANS, LENTILS AND CHICKPEAS ARE THE MOST COMMON VARIETIES OF PULSES.

Pulses are also very high in plant-based protein, fiber, plant based Iron, and folate! Just to name a few.

They are highly versatile when it comes to adding in more nutrients and dense texture to dishes! Plus, they are super affordable. You definitely get more bang for your buck.

Let's take this lentil gumbo for example. I could have gone the traditional route and added in a meat, fish, and/or grain for protein and carbohydrate balance. But as you can see, I didn't. Instead, this snappy Instant Pot Gumbo is packed with pulses (lentils), spices, and vegetables! Still rich in protein, iron, B vitamins, and fiber! And bonus, it's budget friendly!

Which makes this lentil gumbo suitable and satiating for hungry families, carnivores and vegetarians alike! My one pot Lentil Jambalaya is another family favorite. I guess you could say we have a thing for adding lentils to cajun food, right? Haha.

Did I mention it takes 10 minutes to make? Praising the instant pot!

Don't worry, there's a speedy stovetop lentil gumbo option as well.

Okay, so before I jump to the recipe, will you do me a favor? Keep nurturing November going by adding pulses to your diet.
Notes:
Sign up for the Half-Cup Habit, and see how easy it can be to add ½ cup serving of pulses to your diet 3x per week. This quick, cozy Instant Pot Lentil Gumbo is a great place to start, just sayin'.

Instant Pot Lentil Gumbo {Vegan}

Author: Lindsay Cotter

Yield: 6 servings 1x

Bonus Nerdy nutrition fact about lentils :

Did you know that Lentils are one of the most alkaline plant protein sources? Which is important for balancing the body's pH level!

What's your favorite dish to add lentils too? Stock up and add them to all the stews!! Deliciously Nutritious ya'll!
Keep up with the USA Pulses and Pulses Canadaon social media. They are full of recipe inspiration and cooking tips! Facebook , Twitter , Instagram , Pinterest, and YouTUBE Head on over to the page to check out more recipes!
And if you're looking for a another great instant pot recipe that's hearty and healthy, check out Green Healthy Cooking Instant Pot Chicken and Rice! It's on my list to make next!

[clickToTweet tweet="Instant pot #vegan lentil gumbo! Wholesome, quick, Filling @usapulses #halfcuphabit #justaddpulses" quote="A Vegetarian lentil gumbo recipe that's wholesome, quick, and filling!"]

Cheers!

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Vegan Dairy Free This Instant Pot Lentil Gumbo recipe is sponsored by my friends over at USA Pulses and Pulse Canada. Thank you for allowing me to talk about this caring real food company. Gluten Free This vegan lentil gumbo recipe made quick and easy in the instant pot!

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What does it mean to be a learning scientist? What are the unique contributions of learning scientists to the problems we are trying to tackle as a society? How does one find their way to this field?

Humans of Learning Sciences aims to stimulate conversations within the field and beyond about the work of studying and promoting learning in a diversity of contexts. We aim to amplify the voices of diverse scholars (in academia, research, industry, and non-profit organizations) at various stages in their careers in order to showcase the range of methods, approaches, and trajectories that define the interdisciplinary field of learning sciences.

Each episode contains links of the discussed works, as well as a transcript, in the external episode descriptions.

The host and producer, Dr. Mon-Lin Monica Ko, holds a PhD in the learning sciences from Northwestern University. She is a research assistant professor at the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Illinois of Chicago.

The series is co-produced by Andrew Gregory Krzak.

Humans of Learning Sciences is made possible by the generous support of Dr. Alison Castro Superfine, Director of the Learning Sciences Research Institute.

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What does it mean to be a learning scientist? What are the unique contributions of learning scientists to the problems we are trying to tackle as a society? How does one find their way to this field? Humans of Learning Sciences aims to stimulate conversations within the field and beyond about the work of studying and promoting learning in a diversity of contexts.

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University-Community Links Reading List - Fall 2020

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On a recent afternoon in June, a line of kids between the ages of 5 and 13 snaked back from the door at the edge of classroom at St. Anthony's Catholic School in East Oakland, California. Some jumped up and down, others chattered with their classmates. They were clearly in a playful mood. At the front of the line, a teacher addressed a 10-year-old boy, with a backpack slung over his shoulder, waiting to exit.

"Ready?" she asked. "Okay. What is 36 divided by 6?"

"Six!" the boy said, then gave her a high five before heading out. The next kid stepped up to take his turn.

Standing in a long fluorescent-lit hallway just outside, Mara Mahmood smiled at all the enthusiasm. Mahmood, a psychologist, is the executive director of University-Community Links, a network of "play-based" educational, afterschool programs, which emphasized the importance of play in cognitive, social and emotional development. The programs take inspiration from Lev Vygotsky, an influential 20th century Belarusian developmental psychologist and early advocate of play in education, as well as a host of scientific studies that confirm the importance of play in learning.

Play, she says, encourages children to explore the limits of their imagination, problem solve, hone the capacity for creativity in a low-stakes environment, and exercise all the higher level neural structures unique to humans. Perhaps most importantly, she says, play helps children develop a sense of agency to "be one foot taller than they actually are." Which is the reason Mahmood and her colleagues believe it so essential to engage when learning.

"Think about what you're doing when you're playing," Mahmood says. "When you're a kid, you're imagining things. You tell your friends, 'okay, now you're going to be the firefighter' and 'you're going to drive the firetruck,' 'you go get the hose, I'll grab the water bucket.' You don't know how to be a firefighter, obviously, but you're trying it out anyway. You're doing it collaboratively. Play allows us to get outside of what we do on a regular basis and imagine and create and to try out new things we might not otherwise be able to experience. It makes anything seem possible."

These are skills Mahmood argues that will become increasingly important as more jobs become automated as advances in computing and artificial intelligence continue to disrupt society.

"What we will need are people who can think not just outside the box-but who aren't even imagining a box," she says. "And one of the ways you can learn to do that, I believe, is, is through play - or these informal-learning kind of environments where kids are reaching beyond what they already know how to do, and using their imagination and creativity."

The Oakland program, in which kids learn science and math through games, baking (it's good for learning ratios) and a whole host of other activities, is designed to foster STEM learning. But the focus differs at each of the roughly 30 programs operating under the UC Links umbrella. Each one is linked to a nearby university, an arrangement which allows facility, graduate students and undergraduates to gain teaching experiences, and perform research on the power of playful learning and related concepts, and the children to get low-cost top quality educational opportunities in a nontraditional manner. They all draw from the ideas of Vygotsky, who argued learning just like play is most effective when it happens in an environments that are co-constructed in a social way among collaborative partners, takes place within a real-world context, and is self-directed.

That means the UC links programs are structured so students have choice - usually they are given several options and can choose which activity to participate in, are usually hands-on, concrete activity, rather than passive, abstract rote learning. They usually allow space for creativity and experimentation. And they are collaborative, promoting the development of the social skills that, hopefully, will make them less likely to suffer from the epidemic of isolation and loneliness at the heart of the teen mental health crisis.

Beyond that, the programs vary widely. In San Luis Obispo, partners at Cal Poly are experimenting with ways to use play to teach local school children about microbiology; activities involve a tag-like game where the kids pretend to be viruses and infect their classmates. The goal is to learn about herd immunity. In Irvine, graduate students at the local UC campus are experimenting with playful, informal ways of teaching math through informal learning strategies. Another program out of Oakland is focused on urban planning.

Simply by making these modifications, Mahmood argues, children engage more active learning, as shown by a long list of research published by study participants, starting with a 1997 research from Appalachian State University professor Bill Blanton suggesting among other things that third and fifth grade children who participated in play-based after-school programs outscored their person on measures of reading, math achievement and language comprehension; a 2004 paper from UCLA in which after-school program participants demonstrated more fluency in their writing skills, more sophisticated use of vocabulary, and better control of syntax and grammar; and a recent student from Professor Glynda Hull, of UC Berkeley, which found that 86 percent of high school students participating in a UC Links program in West Oakland maintained or improved their grade point average and had significantly better school attendance (95 percent) as compared to their non-participating peers (68 percent).

"It's fun cause you have the thrill of learning without being forced to learn," said one participant, 13-year-old Serena, a 7th grader who enjoys Kung Fu. "In school, you're forced to learn this or you have to do that. But when you're in your free will, and you want to learn by yourself, it's better. We get to hang out with our friends most of the time, and we have an option to do the activities that we want to do."

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

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'Play Science' is making learning fun for kids

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Play encourages children to explore their imaginations, problem solve, create and exercise all the higher level neural structures unique to humans.