It’s getting chilly.  It even rained this morning a rarity in Southern California.  It’s soup weather!  I love homemade soup.  It’s so yummy and soothing.  It just makes me happy.  I made a vat (I can only make a large volume of soup.  It’s a full crock pot or nothing.) of chicken veggie the other day.  It was delicious.  I was looking for something new for my next soup yumminess and had decided to try to be healthy so I figured I’d make some lentil soup.

My friend Giovanna makes delicious lentil soup.  I watched her once and I swear all she did was put water, chicken, lentils & squash chunks in a giant pan and stirred it once in a while until it was done.  It’s delicious.  I figured I could do that!  To be on the safe side I looked up a few recipes online.  Then I ditched them all and did my own thing.  Now I have 3 large containers of soup that tastes like dirt.  Blah.  I failed but I have to eat the dirt soup because I made it and I’m not in a position to be able to toss perfectly good food out the window just because it’s a little “earthy.”

One of my friends is ill.  I offered to bring her some dirt soup (you know … pawn some off on her).  She declined.

For your reference here is how you make dirt soup:

* Take your lentils and lay them out to pick out “dirt and sticks” per all the instructions you read on the internet.  Decide that is dumb and after looking at it for a second or two scoop up all the lentils and put them in a bowl.  You are trying to be healthy and this is the source of protein in this soup so use a lot of them.

* Soak the lentils for 20 minutes then forget about them and realize you soaked them for about 3 hours instead.

* Toss the lentils, that have now tripled in volume and seem overwhelming but what the hell, into the crock pot.  Add 3 bags of frozen veggies.  I like to choose 3 different types so there is a lot of variety in case I don’t like something in one of them.  Pour in salt free chicken broth until the crock pot is nice and full.  Add some sort of variety seasoning thing just because it seems like a good idea.

* Turn it on high for two hours.

* Decided two hours isn’t enough because somehow the lentils are still crunchy.  Keep the crock pot on high and go to bed and read your book.

* When you are sick of reading your book and just want to go to sleep get up and turn off the crock pot.

* In the morning put the soup into containers and stick in the fridge and/or freezer.

* After exercise that night pull out one and warm up a bowl full.  Consume.  Realize you made dirt soup.  Feed some of the vegetables to the dogs to make it go away faster.
Supplement your dinner with some saltines.

Dirt soup.  It’s what’s for dinner.

(Pictures of the soup would be boring.  Think veggies floating around in a brownish liquid with weird pea colored things popping up now and then.  I’ve added pictures of the dogs for entertainment.  Please enjoy the adorableness of Riggins, Asscher, Clover & Mckenzie.)