Red Lentil Soup

Soup is pretty much my go to meal when I don’t really feel like cooking or when I don’t have time.

Thick, creamy soup is my favorite.  If you can put a spoon in it and the spoon stands up by itself, then I love it!

Growing up, we ate mostly chicken soup, which, of course, had protein.  Or we had tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich.  Again, protein.  So I wanted to come up with a soup that would provide a lot of protein in one bowl.  Enter lentils.

This soup takes less than an hour to make and has a rather short list of ingredients, but some nice flavor.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups red lentils
• 2 stalks celery
• 4 medium carrots
• 2 small leeks
• 2 Tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon ground rosemary
• 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 cloves roasted garlic (you can use fresh, minced, but they will be stronger, so I recommend putting them in with the lentils and cooking them that way)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400.
2. Roughly cut the celery, carrots and leeks.  Toss in the oil and sprinkle with the rosemary, mustard or salt.
3. Roast the veggies till soft, roughly 30-40 minutes depending on how small you chopped them.  check after 15 and stir. If you are using roasted garlic, cut the top off of a head of garlic, drizzle with olive oil, wrap in foil and put it in with the veggies.  It will be done when it is soft, about the same amount of time as the veggies more or less.
4. Rinse lentils and put in a pot with 6 cups of water and bring to a boil (add the raw garlic at the beginning if you are using that instead of the roasted). Cover and simmer till soft, approximately 30 minutes.
5. Cool vegetables and lentils, then put in Vitamix and process till smooth, adding more water if needed to reach desired consistency.

Enjoy!