Soup for a tight budget

One of my favourite recipes when there's not a lot in the cupboard or in my wallet is Lentil Soup with Couscous and Kale. I invented it one cold night when we had some left-over couscous and not much else in the house. I always love to make soups and this is one of my best. It's satisfying, healthy, colourful, easy and above all dirt cheap. Lentils are the perfect budget food since they very inexpensive when you buy them dry, which is actually the best way to buy them anyway. Canned lentils aren't very good. Plus unlike dried beans, they don't have to be soaked overnight and cook up quickly so you don't even have to be good at planning dinners ahead. This recipe has come in handy numerous times when we've been tight for cash, which sadly happens more often than not as a couple of artists. But you never feel poor when you've got this in your belly.

I made this last week because we have a lot of kale on our hands from the garden and we're saving up for a trip to Berlin, so I'm trying to be ever so frugal.

Lentil Soup with Couscous and Kale

the soup:
- one onion
- several garlic cloves depending on how much you love garlic and how fresh it is
- a red or green pepper (optional, raises the price)
- a carrot or two
- a medium fresh tomato or about 1/3 cup of canned or strained tomatoes
-1/2 tsp coriander seeds
-1/2 tsp onion seeds or mustard seeds (optional, not everyone likes these)
-1/4 tsp cumin seeds
-1 tsp curry powder
-1/4 tsp garam masala
-small hot pepper
-1 tbsp cooking oil
-1 cup orange lentils (the really little ones)
- 2-3 cups of water or stock
-Salt and pepper to taste

Garnish:
-steamed kale
-cooked couscous

Instructions:
Toast the seeds in hot oil, add onion and simmer until the onion softens. Add chopped peppers and carrots. Add the chopped tomato and the curry powder and garam masala, finely diced hot pepper and garlic to make a rue of spices. This should not be an overpoweringly hot soup, just a little piquant, so be cautious with quantities of spices. Wash lentils then add to pot, stir for a minute then add the water or stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer for 15-20minutes.

Meanwhile, if you don't have already cooked kale and couscous, you can now prepare these.
Serve in a large bowl, pouring soup in first, then spoonfuls of the couscous on top like a crouton in french onion soup and the bright green kale over-top of that.

A Veggie Feast

I'm getting very behind with posting because I'm getting so busy at work and getting ready to go to Berlin in September and October. As a result of our trip, we won't be able to do a fall harvest in the garden. But things have been very dry and a lot of plants have withered so there may not be much to harvest come October anyway.
In effect, we had our harvest feast early. Last weekend I picked the few decent beets and carrots, the last of the green beans and a few of the heritage tomatoes. Since the beets were very small, it didn't make sense to boil them. Instead I shredded the beets and carrots into a small salad dressed with sesame seeds, lemon and a little olive oil.
The tomatoes just got the basil and salt and pepper treatment, while the beans and beet greens were steamed. Rick did a masterful job of transforming left-over rice into a beautiful spicy biryani and created his own home-made falafel balls, which included home-grown coriander seeds. We topped the falafels with plain yogurt.
It was a very colourful and delicious feast. I'm going to miss the garden.

Focaccia

There are some kitchen gadgets that seem to be just a big fat waste of counter space and money, but then there are others that I wouldn't do without. One of those is our bread machine. It really is super easy and useful. You just measure out the ingredients, select which type of bread and hit the start button. Three or four hours later you have fresh baked bread. Or, you can put the ingredients in the evening, set the time and in the morning you wake to the incredible aroma of baking bread. That will get anyone out of bed!
This weekend, I tried making focaccia for the first time. I've made numerous pizzas (someday I will show this in the blog) with the "dough setting" but never tried focaccia. With so many ripe cherry tomatoes to use up each day I thought I'd give it a whirl. I added fresh sage, rosemary and oregano to the basic focaccia recipe. When it was finished rising, I removed the dough from the machine and spread it out in two corn-meal dusted pans. After brushing lightly with olive oil I then dimpled the top with cherry tomatoes and scattered some sea salt on top. It baked up beautifully in the oven in about 25 minutes.
Voila. Lovely for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

You say toe-mat-toes and I say toe-may-toes...

Yes, they are here. The great red globes, the tiny scarlet pearls, the pointy ones and the giants. We've got tomatoes!
It's always such a thrill to have the first cherry tomato right off the vine. This actually happened more than two weeks ago, but I've been very busy and haven't been keeping up with posts. But the first full sized tomatoes ripened last weekend. We had two tomatoes from the store in our fruit bowl, so we did a "blind" taste test. (Blind is in quote because we put the slices on the plate, looked at them and then decided to close our eyes). Hands down, there really isn't any competition even if it wasn't a very fair test. Indeed, the judges were rather biased from the start, but nonetheless... The garden tomato wins for flavour, texture, colour and smell. Oh, that smell. How I love it.














In this photo, left to right: Early girl, Nebraska Wedding, Cherokee.