Friday's soup....Lentil Soup

Happy Friday All.

I've noticed something over the past week....I really do enjoy cooking.  Lol

There was a point when I had to really be in the mood to cook or either really be hungry.  Not that I didn't cook; I always have because if I didn't my kiddies wouldn't be able to eat.  I just never really found too much enjoyment in it unless I was in a particular mood.  I attribute that to working umpteen million jobs, dealing with kids, homework, errands, and just the hectic life of being a Mommy.  Now that I'm able to be home full time and the older ones are either grown or pretty self sufficient I'm finding how much I really do find pleasure in cooking for my family.  Time and timing is everything.

So today's soup is Lentil soup.  I've never cooked it and have only eaten Lentils maybe once or twice in my life. Sometime's I get a little nervous about trying new things, mainly because I hate wasting money...but I'm working on overcoming that.  You never know if you like something or not unless you give it a chance.  I haven't had asparagus or okra as an adult so the next soup may be something that includes one of those.  We'll see.

The lentil soup was a pretty easy process.  I actually found the recipe online instead of my trusty recipe book. And this time I followed the instructions just about to the letter.  The only substitution I made was using fresh tomatoes instead of from the can.  Sometime easier is better, but I really do want to work on using fresh ingredients.  So, as always, pictures.....

Chopped celery, carrots and bay leaves sauteed

Remainder of ingredients added minus spinach

Finished soup w/spinach

Ready to eat! 

Yes it was very tasty!!!

Ok, as I finish typing this entry I just realized that I lied about a minor detail earlier .  I actually started typing this  hours ago and am just not finishing up.  Got side tracked a little because we intended on going to drop off our little guy to spend the weekend with his Nana and Papa.  What was supposed to be just a brief visit turned into us being there for about four hours.  I LOVE those people.  It's always so fun just hanging out and talking with them..  Anyway......It dawned on me that I said I didn't make any changes to the recipe and I actually recalled that I did.  Nothing major...but because we LOVE spicy in our household we added cayenne  pepper to our individual bowls of soup.  So I guess it's really not altering the recipe, but it gave it that extra little added flavor and zip.

This soup was surprisingly good and much more filling than I initially imagined it would be.  One that I'll definitely be making again in the future.  Of course we have leftovers so I think this weekend blogging will be put on hold while we finish the leftover soups we have.  I'll resume on Monday with a new soup for day 6.  In the meantime everyone have a happy safe weekend.

Peace and Blessings.