A soupy mood

For some reason I haven’t been in a soupy mood recently, but the other day while we were out shopping. I pickled up a pack of red lentils, and today I souped them. I didn’t know, or maybe had forgotten that the word lentil has a Latin origin and by the way, the name Cicero is derived from another legume, the chickpea. I shall think of Cicero as I eat my hummus in future. There’s evidence of people eating lentils as far back as 13,000 years ago – so no doubt the human association is far older, and that Canada produces 45%of the world’s lentils.

Back to soup. I didn’t use a recipe, I just soaked the lentils for maybe an hour, then cooked them with some chicken stock pot jelly things from Knorr. I fried a small chopped onion in bacon fat, ditto a small amount of red pepper, ditto a kabanos, and added them to the lentils when they were cooked – hardly any time at all, maybe 20 mins. I put them all in my trusty blender, reheated and then we ate it garnished with chopped chives, chopped tarragon, and a little more fried red pepper.

I must admit it was very nice, very tasty, and completely the right thing for these chilly days. I mentioned yesterday that we’re keeping out heating to the minimum – and in fact we didn’t put the fire on until the evening so it really was quite cold, despite our layers of jumpers!  I think I’m back in the swing with soup, I wonder what I will make tomorrow – what have we got? I shall have to burrow in the freezer, otherwise it will be potato soup of which there are loads of recipes to be found by googling!

You can see from my featured image, I went mad with the garnish! By the way, I could easily have used veg stock pots, and no bacon but maybe leek instead of bacon to make it veggie!