A few weeks ago – I can’t remember exactly when – I made something else from my list of food to make: apricot lentil soup. I love soup – soup is good food! It makes a great meal! [1. That's the only Dead Kennedy's song I know. ] And on a cold winter’s day, what’s more comforting?
I got the recipe for this from Allrecipes.com; since the link has gone AWOL from my bookmarks I can’t send you there. However, I did print it out:
3 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic
1/3 c dried apricots, cut up
1 1/2 c red lentils
5 c chicken stock
3 roma tomatoes (I used half of a can of tomatoes)
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp thyme
First, you saute the onion, garlic and apricots in olive oil, and then you add the lentils and stock, bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes. Then add the tomatoes, the spices, and simmer for another 10 minutes. The next step says to put half the soup into a blender and puree, but I have a fancy schmancy handheld immersion blender (also called a “wand”) so I used that to puree the soup instead. [2. I do have a blender - it's my grandmother's very old blender, and it weighs a ton. Back in the day, everything was made of steel and iron and toughness, and they never broke down. That blender is older than I am, and it's going to outlast your kids. ] Easiest. Soup. Ever!
The problem with soup for me is this: I am a single lady, and a pot of soup is all well and good, except that it lasts forever. On day one of soup, it’s all “YAY! SOUP! YUMMY!” and day two goes something like “SOUP! Still awesome!” By day three, the blush is definitely off the rose and by day four I’m cursing the fact that I made the stuff in the first place. “Well, why don’t you freeze it?” you are saying. I could, but there’s the problem of the itty bitty freezer, and the fact that when I cleaned out my freezer last week, I pulled out about a dozen containers of unlabeled soup-like product that had been there for an indefinite amount of time. There’s also the problem that some soups don’t freeze well – potatoes fall apart, mushrooms get rubbery, and let’s not talk about the disgusting mess that zucchini and other squash becomes when it thaws.
The solution for me, then, is to either label and date any containers of soup I put in the freezer and not put any more in until I’ve used up what’s in there, and/or make a smaller batch each time.