Finally...a little home cooking

Of course I still have plenty to do, with grading, laundry, and the like. But it's cold out, cloudy, and there's freezing rain falling. My work can wait for a little time in front of the stove. I've earned the right to cook a little for myself! I had bought some lentils awhile back to make soup, and there was a good sale on canned corn the other day, so I thought I'd do a little Google search for a recipe that called for those two items.

I came up with a corn and lentil soup! One recipe was listed on multiple web sites, so I thought it must be good, and even better, I actually had everything in it already in my cupboards. According to my calculations, it's only 3 points for 1/8th of the batch, though, it's looking more like there could be 10 servings in it. I have yet to measure it all out. If there are ten servings, it's only 2 pts.

It's a meatless soup, but it would be easy and delicious to add some turkey or chicken if you wanted. In fact, I purposefully didn't call it a vegetarian because one of the alterations I made was to use part chicken stock instead of water. The recipe calls for seven cups of water. I did three cups of water and four cups of chicken broth. I feel that will make it more flavorful.

I also used a whole can of corn instead of just one cup (a can is about 2.5 cups) and I used a can of diced tomatoes instead of two fresh ones. I don't keep fresh tomatoes around, typically, and canned was easier. I strained the liquid from the corn but put the whole can of tomatoes in, juice and all. I also had a little bit of spinach in the fridge that needed to be used, so I threw that in as well.

I also added a little of my Trader Joe's Everyday Seasoning to my bowful, just for added flavor. It's not a strongly flavored soup, but I don't like adding too much salt to stuff. Overall, it's a great, healthy soup and very very easy. I spent maybe 10-15 minutes prepping it in total, and then you just have to wait for it to simmer for 25 minutes. I can do other stuff while I wait. Easy!

So there you go. A little winter warmth in no time at all. Best of all is that soup always tastes even better reheated, so I'm stoked to see what the coming days' servings bring!