Recipe Thursday

This Thursday I was lucky enough to have Kill home for lunch because his students were graduating near to our house, yay!

Now, I couldn't eat all this so Kill gallantly volunteered to eat my extra bread and corn but it was delicious.

We ate:

• steamed corn on the cob
• 1 dolma (rice stuffed grape leaves)
• steamed chard with sesame oil, lemon juice and sea salt
• sourdough with sliced avocado
• lentil soup with peas, tarragon and thyme
• fresh peas in the pod

Since, I bought the dolmades (plural of dolma) at Community Naturals, why don't I share the recipe for the lentil soup? This is from "This Crazy Vegan Life" (Pg 145, Pirello, 2008) but I left out the canned tomatoes and added more herbs. I'm phasing out industrial canned things because of BPA exposure and because it's summer, so I can!

Lentil and Vegetable Soup (serves 4)

1 tsp oil (I used sesame)
4 cloves garlic
1 red onion - but any type would do
sea salt (I grind it in my mortar and pestle with some wakame seaweed*)
2 stalks celery
1 carrot
1 cup rinsed lentils (brown ones are best here)
5 cups water
2 bay leaves
1/2 cup rinsed, uncooked barley

Optional: 2 leaves ripped up fresh tarragon, 3 sprigs fresh thyme, fresh or frozen peas (about 2 tbsp)

1. heat oil in large pot
2. put in diced onion, followed by garlic, season with pinch a salt
3. after 3 minutes, put in chopped celery with another pinch of salt
4. one more minute later, put in chopped carrot with a pinch salt
5. letting it cook for one last minute, put in water, lentils, barley and bay leaves and bring it to a boil
6. cover the soup once it's boiled and simmer it for 45 minutes (I set a timer and watched Say Yes to the Dress)
7. discard bay leaves, spoon into bowls and add peas, tarragon or thyme (or all three!)

Happy eating my sweeties :)

Love,
 Cail

*seaweeds or sea vegetables are very good for cleansing the body of radiation according to Japanese traditional cooking. Super useful for areas with nuclear reactor melt down or when you've had a scan!