Debby Eats: More Soup!!

Yes I have more soup for you. It's finally cold outside and I am taking full advantage of this weather. I love the cold, I get to get cozy with lots of blankets, and keep warmie. I love it! I get to wear all my cute sweaters and hats and gloves. I love it! I just got a set of really cute gloves and a hat. They are owls!! Yes I am one of those! Strange people wearing the animal themed hats. Oh and another good thing about cold weather is that I get to eat and make soup.

I have a few soup recipes I want to try out. One my mom found for me the, other is a recreation of a soup I had from Wegmans. They both have lentils in them, yum. Honest moment, I have never actually cooked lentils before. I have seen them being made and have eaten them before, but never made them on my own. Scary! I needed red lentils for one recipe and green for another, I chose to buy just red and use them for both recipes. I made the recipe my mom gave me first. Since I never had it, unlike the Wegmans one, which was a Moroccan Lentil Soup. This one I made contains sweet potatoes, apples, and carrots, along with the lentils. Interesting, I know. Oh and the best part of this recipe was that it says it had carrots in the title but as you read the ingredients, well they must have forgotten to put them on the list. Funny! So I added them in there anyway. Also I made my version more into a stew then a soup, they also wanted you to puree it but I left it chunky.

Red Lentil and Sweet Potato Stew

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium sweet potato, peeled and cubed
1 apple, slightly peeled, cored, and cubed
1 cup carrots, peeled and cubed
1 small onion, diced
1/2 cup red lentils, rinsed and picked through
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon coriander
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 cups vegetable broth
fresh parsley, chopped for garnish

Heat a large soup pot with the oil. Add in the chopped sweet potato, apple, onions, and carrots. Saute veggies for 8 minutes and onions are translucent.

Add in the spices. Let them cook for two minutes to bring out the flavors of the spices.

Add in the lentils and the broth.

Bring to a boil, lower heat and cover.

Allow it to cook for 30 minutes or until the veggies are soft.

Top with parsley and enjoy. The cinnamon really is not overpowering in the dish, but then again I do love some cinnamon.

Guess what! I broke in my dehydrator! I made kale chips! A friend showed me how she makes hers, and how easy it is, so I made some of my own. I tried two different flavors. One with my usually spice blend on them, the other was a smokey chip. I used smoked sweet paprika and the chipotle hot sauce. They didn't smell to nice while dehydrating, but taste good. The other chips:

Kale Chips

1/8 cup walnut oil
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon coriander
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/4 teaspoon salt and pepper
1 bunch of kale

Wash and de-stem (remove the stems all the way up the leaf) the kale, keeping it in large pieces because as they dry the shrink down, so smaller chips can fall through the grates.