Homemade lentil soup (dinner 11.11.10)

I was really in the mood for soup tonight, so I decided to make some lentil soup for dinner. I have plenty of canned soup in the pantry, but it's just not the same as a nice homemade bowl of soup. I only made enough soup for one person since I'm on my own tonight, but it was quite a big serving. To make it, I just cut up all the veggies & threw all the ingredients into a pot and let it boil/simmer for about an hour and a half. The ingredients consisted of :

• 1/2 cup dry lentils
• 1 cup chicken broth (I normally would use vegetable broth, but I'm all out)
• 1 cup water
• 5 baby carrots
• 1 medium celery stalk
• 1/2 small tomato
• 1 cup raw spinach
• 3 tbsp. chopped onion
• 1 clove garlic
• 2 bay leafs
• 1/4 tsp thyme
• dash of pepper

The soup came out good, but since it was a last minute throw-together, it wasn't my best. I used to make soup all the time, so I've been through a lot of soup recipes. I find it comes out the best when I start from scratch and make it up myself. I usually like to bulk it up with lots of different veggies, but tonight I just kept it simple with the basics. I should really make soup more often because it's so good for you. Maybe that will be another goal of mine (2 in one day, wow)- to make more homemade soups! The soup I made tonight had about 210 calories, 22 grams of fiber, and 19 grams of protein! Not to mention it's full of veggies so it's loaded with nutrition. With my soup I had a few multi-grain saltine crackers with a slice of reduced-fat American cheese. The cheese is Weight Watchers brand, which I've found to be the best-tasting reduced-fat American variety. Most brands of low-fat American cheese taste really fake and have a plastic texture. Weight Watchers however tastes like fresh, full-fat cheese even though it isn't!