Hate cilantro?

Try it in pesto.

Lentil Soup

It rained this weekend. I made a pretty conventional lentil soup for Munch and Mingle. People seemed to like it. I forgot the scallion tops, which I think add a lot to lentil or split pea soup, not to mention chicken soup. I used turkey ham in my soup this time.

Home-style Lentil Soup

Ingredients - amounts can be varied
1 pound dried lentils
2 medium to large chopped yellow onions (depending on whether you include scallions)
2 Tablespoons vegetable or olive oil (more if needed to caramelize onions)
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme leaves or 1 teaspoon dried (optional)
2 large or 4 medium-sized ribs celery and some leaves, medium-diced
4 large or 6 medium-sized carrots, medium-diced
1 quarts water
1 pound diced ham, turkey ham or smoked turkey (optional)
Additional water or broth (about a quart)
Salt and additional pepper to taste
Rinsed, trimmed and diced green tops from 1 bunch scallions

Directions
Pick over and rinse lentils.

In a 6 quart or larger Dutch oven or stockpot on medium heat, saute the onions, pepper and thyme until the onions are translucent and start to caramelize, stirring frequently. For richer flavor, you can caramelize the onions to a light brown color. Watch that they don't burn. Lower heat if necessary. Add the celery and carrots and saute for a few more minutes if you have time. Add a quart of water and the lentils. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and start to simmer, covered. Dice meat (if used) and mix into hot soup.

If you need to transport the soup, this is a good time to do it, to prevent spilling. Place your kettle in a slightly larger cardboard box. When you reach your destination, add additional water or broth to the desired consistency (about a quart of water), bring to a boil again and simmer until the lentils are tender, about an hour. Or finish cooking in a 6-quart slow cooker. Lentils may continue to swell as they finish cooking, so you may need to adjust water or broth further. Shortly before the soup is done, add diced scallion tops, if you are using them. Add salt and additional pepper to taste.

Quantity Cooking: If you double the recipe, you will have enough for an 8-quart stockpot to take to a potluck, with about 2 quarts to leave home for later. Mix all ingredients after adding 2 quarts water and the diced meat, then transfer some to a 3-quart saucepan. Transport the 8-quart stockpot before adding additional water or broth. Take diced scallions with you in a little baggie if you plan to use them. If you have a big enough pot with a heavy bottom, you can multiply this recipe further. You could also transport cold soup in big plastic pitchers.

Other recipes

From our friend Jana, a healthy recipe with lemon and greens. We might use escarole, Tyfon Holland Greens, mild Asian greens such as Tatsoi, or even kale in place of spinach.

Lemon and Lentil Soup
This soup is a great dish to prepare when you don’t have a lot of time; we use a food processor for all of the chopping which cuts the preparation time in half. Serve this soup over cooked brown jasmine or basmati rice. This soup also freezes well for later use.

Serves 4 to 6
1 small onion
5 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 cups red (or green) lentils, rinsed and drained
8 cups vegetable stock or water
4 to 5 cups baby spinach
1 small handful fresh parsley
½ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 to 2 teaspoons sea salt or Herbamare

1. Peel and cut ends off of the onion and place into a food processor fitted with the “s” blade. Peel the garlic and place it into the food processor along with the onion. Pulse the onions and garlic until finely chopped.

2. Heat olive oil in a 6-quart pot. Add onions and garlic and sauté for about 5 minutes or until soft.

3. Add the lentils and the vegetable both or water. Cover pot and simmer for about 25 minutes or until lentils are very soft and cooked through.

4. While the lentils are cooking, place the spinach and parsley into the food processor and pulse until minced.

5. Add minced parsley and spinach to the cooked lentils along with the lemon juice and sea salt. Simmer on low for another 3 to 5 minutes. Taste and add more salt or lemon juice if desired. Serve over cooked brown jasmine or brown basmati rice.

Recipe from pg 150 of The Whole Life Nutrition Cookbook: The Recipes, by Alissa Setersten & Tom Malterre, MS, CN

Here's a recipe with lots of veggies, tomato paste and cumin.  It's vegetarian if you substitute water or vegetable broth for chicken broth. I would substitute lemon juice for the red wine or red wine vinegar, as I am allergic to the sulfites in wine. I might even add a little lemon zest.  I like lemon zest in spaghetti sauce.  Might also try it with basil in place of cumin.

Another recipe with a little fresh tomato, cumin, coriander and grains of paradise. Bet I would like it without the cumin, maybe with black pepper if I didn't have grains of paradise. Though maybe coriander and grains of paradise would go well together.

Here's one with chicken, kale and tomato. Have fun trying something a little different.

Tomato Wisdom

Intelligence is knowing a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is knowing not to put one in a fruit salad.

Uh-Oh. Tooth Lice becoming more prevalent

Read about it here. As with most recent dietary/health news, more fruits and vegetables could help. Or oral louse traps.

Hope the first day of April is good to you.

First Day of Spring

Planted out 36 varieties of tomatoes, four rows with 9 plants each. Links to descriptions of most of them are here. I found some frost damage on three or four of the many plants we started, particularly on smaller plants of "Marianna's Peace". "Boondocks" turned out to be regular-leaf plants, so it seems to be mislabeled. "Grightmire's Pride" included both plants with typical Oxheart foliage and small potato-leaved plants, which can't be right. Haven't planted the PL type yet, and haven't given any away, either. But "Boondocks Mystery" was popular with the Cub Scouts.

We still have 16 or 17 varieties to go, mostly cherry tomatoes and other small varieties. We should know more about tomatoes at the end of the season. Or at least, I hope we do.

From the Southwest:
Row 1: Early Challenge Hybrid, Boondocks (RL mystery plant), Red Rose, Ponderosa Pink, Absinthe, Anna Russian (oxheart), Aunt Ginny's Purple (PL), Super Beefsteak Hybrid, Fourth of July Hybrid

Row 2: Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye, Purple Passion (PL), Orange Russian 117 (sturdier foliage than the typical oxheart), Brandy Boy Hybrid (PL), Gary O Sena (PL), Black and Red Boar, German Head, Reif's Red Heart (oxheart), Moskvich

Row 3: First Lady II Hybrid, Royal Hillbilly, Brandywine OTV (PL), Barbara, Tidwell German, Better Boy (purchased, gallon plant), Heidi, Jetsetter (purchased), Nyagous

Row 4: Cosmonaut Volkov, JD's Special C-Tex, Black Krim, Anna Maria's Heart (oxheart), Momotaro, Goose Creek, Oxheart Pink, Marianna's Peace (PL), AAA Sweet Solano

I also planted in RootTrainers indoors:

Cucumbers: Cool Breeze (HPS), Suhyo TK (Pinetree), Natsuhikari (Evergreen) and Summer Dance (Pinetree). Weather has been warm during the day. Summer Dance started coming up on March 25, a day when the weather was getting cooler and rain was predicted.

Squash: Cougar(Harris), Sweet Zuke (Burpee), Kojac (T&M), Butterstick (Burpee), Magda (Willhite).

Melons: Savor (VBS), Extra Summer Sweet (Evergreen), Early Sugar Shaw (HPS), Summer Dream (Nichols), Lilly (Twilley).

Pole beans: Fortex (VBS) and Champagne (from Zeedman at Gardenweb). They started coming up on March 25.

Update, March 29: We had another family, and James, over to plant tomatoes tonight. They'll be sharing the garden. Planted cherry tomatoes and others, including a few repeat varieties. East fence, from the North: Porter's Dark Cherry, Rosalita, Sweet Chelsea, Black Cherry, Sweet Quartz, Haley's Purple Comet, Evans Purple Pear, Berkeley Tie-Dye, Green Zebra, Golden Egg, Yellow Submarine, Beam's Yellow Pear, Grightmire's PL (unknown), 2 plants

South Fence, from the East: Pop-ins, Green Grape, Grightmire's Pride (oxheart), Dr. Lyle (?), Big Beef, Mortgage Lifter, Momotaro, Aunt Ginnys?, Brandy Boy, Moskvich?, Cosmonaut Volkov.

Had some "help" from a toddler labeling some of the last tomatoes planted..

61 tomato plants. Crazy.

March 15: Official "frost-safe" planting date

Well, it was cold and windy on Saturday, nicer on Sunday and in the 70s today. David finished tilling and prepared a row for the greens and the rest of the beans I had started. Hope they didn't stay in their little containers too long.

Canadian White Blenheim has some blooms now, coinciding this year with a few stragglers on Blenheim and more on Golden Amber, which is further from the big CWB tree. Chinese also had a couple of blooms.
'
Emerald Beaut plum is blooming right with our little Plumcot. Hope it will cross-pollinate. I took some branches over in a bottle-vase. Cassleman and Flavor King still have a few blooms open, too.

Time to get going in the garden.

March 11 - Frost

Surprise. We have light frost on the ground. Most of the tomato seedlings and the beans were outside, and some were on the porch (with an eggplant). So far, it looks like there wasn't much damage. Not cold enough to hurt the fruit trees.

I had watered the seedlings in the afternoon yesterday, and that may have helped protect them. Some of the water on the plants is frozen, and the box containing tomato seedlings has frozen droplets. Just a bare hint of damage on a few tomatoes so far. No frost in the 10-day forecast. March 1 is supposed to be the 50% chance of frost date around here, and March 15 is supposed to be the day when you can plant without significant chance of frost. So I guess this year is pretty typical. Frost on March ll.