Hi Guys –

On Sunday afternoon, I decided it was time to make my lentil soup.  Yay! I love soup when it’s super cold out.  And it sure has been cold out these days!

I love making lentil soup.  I love chopping veggies – I find it therapeutic! For the soup I chop one medium to large onion. At least one cup of celery. At least one cup of carrots.  At least two cloves of garlic!  I was a busy chopper.  Ben even thought to take a picture of me while  I was chopping!

Once I was finished chopping, I added two tablespoons of EVOO into the stock pot, after the oil was finished heating up – I put the onions, celery, and carrots into the pot and let the veggies sweat it out. I kept them cooking for a long time, until the onions were translucent.

Once the veggies were done, I added the broth. Two boxes of 32 ounces of broth plus one can of broth (another 8 ounces) and probably 16 ounces of water.  The chicken broth I used was Stop and Shop organic, low sodium. This broth is great – the low sodium type actually has only 6% of your daily sodium content per serving (one serving is one cup) compared to the normal 50% sodium in average chicken broths.  Because of this fact, I felt like I could add a pinch of kosher salt to the recipe (which it does call for – but in the past I never added).

Once the broth and liquid started to boil, I added the garlic, and the one pound of lentils. I previously rinsed the lentils in warm water and made sure the lentils were clean. (You never know what you might find!)  I also added two eight ounce cans of peeled and diced tomatoes (no salt or sugar added!) along with the tomato liquid found in the can.  Once all of this was getting its grove on, I added a teaspoon of cumin and coriander – and a good amount of freshly ground black pepper. (You can add as much or as little pepper as you’d like!)

Once all of the ingredients were put together, I seriously let the soup cook for an hour and a half on the stove!

While the soup cooked, I threw together a mix of Jiff corn muffins. Usually I try to make things from scratch, but this time I opted for an easier way out! It is definitely possible to make some box mixes healthy. For the Jiff corn muffins, you only need an egg and milk. Instead of an egg, I used egg whites and skim milk… so I added protein and no fat to the mix.  The muffins came out really well – nice and fluffy. Yum!

On Sunday night for dinner, Ben and I enjoyed bowls of veggie lentil soup and corn muffins!