lentil soup.

Josh is currently doing a Daniel Fast for Lent. The Daniel Fast is based on a passage in the Bible where Daniel and the other good Jews ate a strict diet and still were big and strong and handsome. It's a vegan diet, but also no fried foods, leavened bread, additives/preservatives of any kind, and you can only drink water. I did this with him once, right before we got married, and it was totally just a way for me to lose weight. I hated it. I was always hungry, and finding something that I could eat was just such a chore. He's done it a few times. Generally, you do it for three weeks, but he's going the whole forty days. I decided that having a baby during Lent was enough of a sacrifice, so pass the ice cream, I need calcium.

Anyway. For the most part, I let him fend for himself. He eats a lot of apples with peanut butter. But Saturday soup is a standing tradition now, and so I still try to do that. The first time, I made a roasted sweet potato soup which he ate, but did not really care for (little did he know that it is improved with a dollop of sour cream). But last week, I realized that I already had a Daniel-friendly soup recipe in my binder. See? We eat healthy things sometimes. It's not all Paula Deen recipes.

Lentil Soup

My changes: Decrease olive oil to 1 T. I used a 10 oz pack of frozen spinach. I added 1 t cumin and a sprinklin' of cayenne. For the vinegar, I used balsamic. If you are on the Daniel Fast, you'll probably need to use fresh tomatoes, as canned tomatoes almost always have additives of some kind.

Do you like lentils? They're funny little things, and they always remind me of Cinderella, whose step-mother threw some lentils in the fireplace and made her sift through the ashes to find them. They're also really very good for you, full of protein, fiber, and iron. Coupled with the ice cream, that's all a pregnant lady needs.

This soup is really good. I'm sure there are excellent lentil soup recipes out there that start with some kind of pork fat, but I do not miss the meat when I eat this one. Whip some up for your favorite crazy person Daniel faster today.