Give us this day our… Lentil Soup!

I’d like to welcome my friend Bev to blogland. She’s always been out there on Flickr and Twitter and Facebook, but this month she has finally taken the step to the next level– My Daily Bread, where it’s all Bev and Bev’s food all the time, accompanied by wonderful polaroidy photos that make all her meals look like they were cast in the ’70s.

Today she posts what looks like an excellent, simple recipe for lentil soup– the perfect food for a cold january weekend. And its nice to see a little vegetarian love coming from a source who has traditionally approached vegetarians and “healthy” eaters with a bit of suspicion. You can read her post for more on that.

As for this soup, I make a LOT of food with lentils, onions, tomatoes and cumin. Whenever I cook without a recipe, these are what tend to wind up in the pot, plus spinach. For instance, you could use chickpeas instead of lentils, throw in a briquette of frozen spinach, reduce the water, and voila! Stew! You could add squash, curry, cinnamon and allspice, and revoila! A different stew! You can remove the cumin, subtitute black beans and olives and serve it over pasta. The variations are endless.

What I would recommend to Bev, and to anyone who wants to immerse themselves in the company of vegetarians who love food, and the food that they love, are cookbooks like Veganomicon (with a title that awesome, it has to be good, no?) and Yellow Rose Recipes and sites like FatFreeVegan.com (not actually always fat-free, but more so strong on the key Bev requirements: healthy + flavourful + satisfying).