“Dad was doing some research on lentils after his visit,” one of my sisters informed me. “Lentils are fodder,” he told her. Leave it to a farmer to put it in such terms, I thought. But Webster was probably his source, we discovered. The dictionary’s first entry, “a widely cultivated Eurasian annual leguminous plant (Lens culinaris) with flattened edible seeds and leafy stalks used as fodder.”
(I guess it comes as no surprise that he was far more satisfied with his lunch that day, which consisted of mashed potatoes, gravy, baked chicken, etc. – a good hearty Midwestern meal. I didn’t have any real dinner plans, so lentil stew was my pull-something-out-of-the-cupboard supper solution. It prompted more conversation than an “ordinary” meal would have.)
first teacher 
Lentils…I have friends that have been sprouting them lately and then they eat them raw as a snack or in a salad. I tried the salad, very good, but have never sprouted them myself. I was surprised at the different colors of they 'come in'.