I think I should change the name of my blog to 20 Minutes After Bedtime because that’s about as much time as my brain will function after the kids are asleep. Thoughts?
It’s surprisingly easy to be vegan. I’m not into complicated recipes – the more steps the more mess and I wouldn’t exactly call myself highly motivated to clean up. I currently hold the state championship for tolerance for dirty dishes piled in the sink, on the counters, on top of the toaster – wherever. So a nice simple one pot recipe is what I’m looking for – maybe two pots. That’s what I had tonight – a two pot soup. I found the recipe for Scottish Red Lentil (and Barley) Soup at christinascucina.com. It’s not a vegan website but I figured it wouldn’t be hard to alter it and it wasn’t.
My husband loves lentils and barley and all sorts of things from the British Isles like Islay whiskey, rain, and tartan, so I figured I couldn’t go wrong. Time will tell as he arrived only moments ago and is currently reading a 14th story to my middle son who napped from three to five and will subsequently be awake until exactly 5 minutes before the baby wakes up in the morning…
It wasn’t hard to veganize this recipe as it simply required substituting vegetable stock for the beef. Today I used store bought because I used up the homemade stock the other day. Can I just say here how easy it is to make vegetable stock? Take all the scraps you create from peeling carrots and cutting the leafy bits off celery. Throw in an onion and whatever other vegetable rejects you have, fill the pot with water and boil until you remember that you have a pot on the stove filled with boiling vegetables -if you’re like me that’s generally 5 or 6 hours later or when my husband says “is something cooking?” Even easier is cooking the stock overnight in a slow cooker. Unless you store your slow cooker on a high shelf and can’t be bothered to take it down OR unless you saw This is Us. Just saying.
Also, in trying to follow the How Not to Die (HNTD) guidelines, I skipped the added salt aside from what was already in the (reduced sodium) vegetable stock. The soup was yellowish so I threw in some turmeric because it’s supposed to be amazing for you. Also I threw in a secret spice that she doesn’t mention but it turned it from something very good to something ridiculously good. Saffron. In the past when using saffron I’ve taken literally one strand of the stuff and put it into whatever I’m making. Because it costs about as much as our mortgage. But this saffron has now made at least two moves with us and I figured it was time to bite the bullet and actually use an entire capsule, which is what the directions say. Let me just say. Yum.
So my husband walked downstairs (followed moments later completely unsurprisingly by our son on the search for medicine to make his tummy and elbow feel better) and looked on the stove, saw the soup and declared, “Oh my God I want to eat this so much.” Thank you Christinas Cucina and saffron distributors everywhere. Bon appetit!
Mama Mader at Home 