Lentil & Garbonzo Soup

The other day, I made two of my friends a huge pot of lentil soup from a bag of dried lentils! As we figured, the dried lentils had probably been in the house for as long as they had lived there. From the beginning, the lentils claimed their territory in a cupboard too high for my reach. So perched atop KitchenLand, they have lived through 3 winters/summers, multiple moth attacks, high humidity, bitter freezing cold, and not one but two mouse infestations. No need to worry though--contrary to what this may sound like, they do not live in poverty (but JUST barely above it thanks to the Harvard graduate student stipend! And apparently, we’re getting a raise soon! $$KA-CHING$$ that’s the sound of our banks). Instead, this is all part of the normal package of living in an older house in Cambridge, or Boston, or MA, or really the whole North East for that matter, until you get into cockroach region, ewww…but I digress.

So back to the story, the dried lentils were joined by some dried garbonzo beans (yes, they are just as old as the lentils), and they soaked overnight. This BIG pot joined some celery, carrots, onions, garlic, tomato paste, curry powder in and even BIGGER pot, and they were stewed together with the help of not one, but two bay leaves. I thought this would take 1hr. Apparently there were too many lentils and waiting for them to boil to the point where they almost dissolved in your mouth took actually 3hrs. However, it was the perfect way to welcome a friend back to -20C Boston after a delayed flight and a car-stuck-in-ice incident.

Unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries so thinking I’d have more time, I decided to go to bed and take a picture the next day. By the next day, there was only a clean pot and no more soup to take a photo of. David thought it was funny that I was more upset at not having had the chance to take a photo of it than at not actually getting to try to soup itself, but alas, I knew there was still more dried lentils.

I was worried they would get some sort of lentil overdose but apparently that doesn’t exist. Since there is no photo document, I will see if I can convince them to reflect on their soup eating experiences possibly in the form of a haiku, journal entry, or interpretive dance entitled “How the Soup Changed Me”. Stay tuned.

CORRECTION: When I turned on my camera, I found that in it's last attempt to stay alive....it managed to take one blurry picture.