Lentil Soup, Writing and Commiserating

I am very pleased to welcome Tricia and Siana of 2GirlsOnaBench to our humble kitchen this morning. Get out your Dutch oven and a well rounded bottle of wine--we're making soup!

TRICIA
I’m on day three of not washing my hair and it’s not looking good.

SIANA
Cut these potatoes.

TRICIA
You can do that, you can not wash your hair for three days, but I can’t. But I don’t care I’m just hanging out with you.

SIANA
Stir this wine in.  And drink some too.

We’re making lentil soup.  We haven’t seen each other in weeks because we’ve been quarantined from colds and then busy, and then family weekend events and then whatever.

We should be writing but, well, we’re making soup instead. This soup recipe has been handed down from Spain to us, which we have modified from college dorm room to apartment to house.  In that order.

TRICIA
Remember in our first apartment when you made this and then left the chopped bell pepper in the fridge for like three weeks. It smelled and then everything tasted like bell pepper.  Even the butter, the butter tasted like bell pepper. And it was all your fault.

SIANA
Yeah, well, remember when we made it in our dorm room and you put it in the crockpot and it boiled over and was a mess on the floor because we didn’t have a kitchen. It smelled and you left it there for three weeks.

We love lentil soup, Siana got the original recipe from her host mother when she studied abroad in Spain and we’ve been modifying it for the last many years. We always make it together because our spouses don’t really like it so we just make a lot and share it.

Here’s the recipe:

1 bag of dried lentils
1 carton of chicken stock (vegetable stock works too)
2 cups of water (add more if needed)
2 potatoes diced (Yukon golds or red potatoes work best)
2 ribs of celery diced
½ onion chopped
2 carrots diced
1 green bell pepper diced
3 cloves of garlic chopped
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon pepper
½ cup red wine
2 Tablespoons olive oil

 Saute onions, celery, carrots and garlic in olive oil in a dutch oven or big soup pot.

  Add potatoes, bell pepper, lentils, chicken stock, water and salt and bring to a boil.

Simmer for at least 1 hour, maybe more.  You may need to add more water if it starts to look like it’s getting dry or thick.  Towards the end, add the wine and then drink the rest. It may also take more than one hour, monitor the simmering process, it seems to have taken us a long time to make this, but we’ve also been talking and drinking wine while we’re simmering.

Serve soup with crusty bread and enjoy.  You can add a drizzle of olive oil on top if you feel dangerous. Just do it, we’ve been inspired by Barefoot Contessa, she always does that with soup. Go crazy.

TRICIA
Mmmmm

SIANA
Yum

So we didn’t write anything except this recipe. But we decided that’s better than nothing.  We’ll tackle our script next week. Or maybe after Thanksgiving. Or after Christmas.  Oh hell, after New Years, who are we kidding?



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