Sunday February 1, 2009  Yesterday I was fortunate enough to get a visit from a friend whom I sent home with 2 quarts of my split pea soup.  I didn’t care for the too chickeny broth, but was going to eat it anyhow since I didn’t want to waste it.  Problem solved!  Bachelor to the rescue, glad for home cooking, even mine 🙂

I was eager to make a new soup.  I’d never made lentil soup before but from the recipes I’d seen, it shouldn’t be much different than split pea.  I always take note that most soup recipes use a bare minimum of spices, so I typically use 3 times the spice a recipe calls for.  I don’t like hot foods – hot as in peppers and cayenne – so while I do like a high flavor to my dishes, none of them are remotely hot.  I promise.

So I chopped 2 onions and a cup of celery and my sole remaining organic carrot and sauteed in a teaspoon of olive oil, which is all the fat in this entire soup.  I added 6 chopped cloves of garlic and a teaspoon each of sea salt, coarse ground pepper, basil, cumino, thyme, oregano, then thought to add an East Indian mixture of a teaspoon each of cinnamon, garam masala and cardamon powder.

I added 3 bay leaves, a small bag of rinsed lentils and 48 oz of Swanson 98% fat free chicken broth.  Oh, and a big tablespoon of tomato paste.  an hour later, voila.  Not bad.

At first it was kind of boring, that is when I added the cinnamon, garam masala and cardamon.  I also stirred in some chopped parsley and squeezed a lemon half into my second cup and really liked the lemon juice “float” on top of the soup as I eat it.