PULLMAN – Here they celebrate the lentil, historic legume of destiny.
Most of the nation’s lentils are grown in the fertile Palouse region of Washington and Idaho, and this weekend’s 16th annual National Lentil Festival will focus some on a food that many American’s ignore.
“We are always working to improve the consumption of lentils in the U.S.,” said Tim McGreevy, executive director of the trade association U.S.A. Dry Pea &Lentil Council. “We are making incremental gains, but not giant gains.”
That may be about to change. Researchers at Washington State University here have produced lentil puffs that can be flavored and consumed as breakfast cereal or as a snack food. Some of the snacks will be available for tasting at the festival.
Lentils – tiny beans shaped like flying saucers or eyeglass lenses – have always been an also-ran in the United States. But they have a long and storied history in the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
First cultivated 20,000 years ago, lentils are among the world’s oldest crops. They were found in royal Egyptian tombs. They are mentioned in the Bible and are credited by some historians with helping save Western civilization by providing a rich source of food for survivors of the plague in the Middle Ages.
But in the United States, lentils are eaten primarily as ingredients in canned soups. Americans seem to prefer pinto beans, which are often used in Mexican-style fast food.
“They are not as good as lentils, in my humble opinion,” McGreevy sniffed.
Lentils, and their close cousins dry peas and garbanzo beans, were first planted in the Palouse early in the19th century.
Around 1916, a Farmington man named Jacob Wagner planted a field with lentil seeds that were brought to the area from Europe by a Seventh-day Adventist minister. Conditions turned out to be perfect, and by the 1930s they were grown commercially in the Palouse.
By 1995, 190,000 acres of lentils were cultivated in Washington and Oregon. That number has dropped in recent years, to about 155,000 acres. But acreage is up in the rest of the nation, to 235,654 acres last year.
Only about 25 percent of the U.S. production is consumed in this country. The largest export markets are Spain, Italy, Greece and France, McGreevy said.
Farmers typically lose money on lentil sales, but grow the crop because it helps soil recover fertility and provides some weed and disease control.
The annual Lentil Festival is held in a Pullman city park and features various dishes cooked with the legumes. It also has what is billed as the world’s largest bowl of lentil chili, a 450-gallon metal tub consumed by attendees.
“You can have all the lentil chili you can eat,” McGreevy said.
This year’s two-day festival kicks off in downtown Pullman on Friday afternoon. Saturday’s events include a lentil pancake feed, a parade, a lentil cook-off and coronation of the Little Lentil king and queen.
The big news in lentil country is that the convenience food barrier may finally have been cracked by food scientists at WSU.
Lentils typically take about 25 minutes to cook, a disadvantage is speed-obsessed America.
But scientists have discovered a way to “extrude,” or puff up, dried lentils into a ready-to-eat food. Scientists are testing various flavors, including barbecue, cheese, salted and sugarcoated. Some will be available to sample this weekend.
“Basically, they are lentil Cheetos,” said Michelle Poesy, director of the festival. “They taste real good.”
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