Last day of September, first day of soup
Some of the first writing I ever did—not for money, but for publication by someone other than me—was for a food blog called Cheap Healthy Good. (Get you a blog name that can do both, right, in terms of being a name and describing the kinds of recipes you publish.) In my mid twenties I was very into... I was going to say "very into blogs," but what I was really into was reading blogs at my desk. I was also working to dig out of some bad credit card debt, and the main way I did that was by cooking, cheaply and often. I don't remember how I became a contributor to CHG—was I just commenting and Kris, the proprietor, asked me if I wanted to write a column? This was before Twitter. Well, I've gotten jobs in weirder ways.
Weekly or fortnightly I'd do the old food-blog thing of "write up a recipe with a few paragraphs of personal writing or whatever, somewhat related to the recipe." Most of our recipes were adapted from other sites and books—we always gave credit—though I did "invent" some of my own recipes, like tiny pizzas made in the toaster oven that used rounds of eggplant for the crusts, or blanched string beans and seitan tossed in mayo and Old Bay. (That one's actually great.)
I just realized that I'm doing the exact same thing now: writing a few paragraphs of personal writing in preamble of a recipe. :o
Anyway. One of the true adaptations I wrote about was a lentil soup. Here's a bit of my write-up from the blog:
I don’t know how this recipe can be thought to work as written. It comes from the usually-genius 101 Cookbooks, but without these two additions, it tastes like tomato paste and lentils. That’s not a good combination. Using fire-roasted tomatoes helps, when you’ve got a few extra cents to spare, but even still. Without the additions I now pledge never to forget, I don’t get it.
I don't know how I figured out that if you added balsamic vinegar and cumin to this soup, it became amazing, but I did, and I shared that joyous discovery with the internet.
In the years since, we all moved on from CHG. I'd still go back there for recipes every so often, for a recipe I'd written about half a decade before, to see what I'd once known. (I almost always skipped over the preamble.) But at some point in the last few months, after losing my job and needing to tighten the belt, I went back for a recipe and found the site gone. It had been years since it was active—and I'm sure Kris got way more spam about the site than I did, and I still did—but my recipes! My twenties. My strict $35/week grocery budget and quiet one-bedroom at the top of the island, my farmers market and my little vegetarian meals for one.
My lentil soup.
Tanner has a cold, and it's suddenly fall, and I wanted to make something that could last us into the week with some leftovers. Long story short: god bless the Wayback Machine.
Here, for perpetuity—you know, the solid permanence of a tinyletter—is my best, favorite, cheapest, healthiest, best lentil soup:
Lentil Soup for the Ages
Serves 6
Adapted from 101 Cookbooks
2 cups black beluga lentils (or green French lentils), picked over and rinsed
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes (or 1 14.5-ounce can each of diced and crushed) (fire-roasted if you like)
2 cups water
3 cups of a big leafy green (chard, kale, etc), rinsed well, deveined, finely chopped (stalks, too)
3 T Balsamic vinegar (or to taste)
1 t cumin (or to taste)
To a medium pot or Dutch oven, add 6 cups water. Boil. Add lentils. Cook until tender, around 20 minutes or so. Drain and walk away.
While the lentils are boiling, get out a large pot or Dutch oven. Heat oil over medium heat. Add onion and salt. Cook 4 to 5 minutes, until onions are a little soft and translucent, stirring occasionally.
If you’re using your greens’ stalks (and do, especially with chard!), add them and sauté a couple more minutes.
Add tomatoes, lentils, and 2 cups water. Cook until soup is simmering again.
Add vinegar and cumin. Stir.
Add chopped greens/chard. Stir. Cook 1 minute. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve.
And in case you're wondering, because this is what we did at Cheap Healthy Good, each serving has 282.5 calories, 3.6g fat, and in 2009 cost $1.18.