Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Clearing the pantry

In case you haven't heard, we had quite a snow storm here in Southern MN over the past 24 hours. I decided to celebrate the occasion, or perhaps 'mark the occasion' would be a better choice of words since I'm definitely a glass half empty person when it comes to appreciating the beauty and utter coldness of a Minnesota winter. In any case, I woke up this morning and knew I wanted one of my favorite comfort foods for dinner, split pea soup and homemade 7 Grain Bread.



As I reached into the pantry for a package of dried, split peas, I saw I had 3 packages of lentils and only 1 package of split peas. Definitely time for a pantry clearing soup, so lentil soup it would be. In addition to the excess lentils, I had at least half a dozen cans of tomatoes. There must have been quite a sale on canned tomatoes at some point because fresh tomatoes out of the garden, a big favorite with me, tomatoes in any other form, not so much.

I sauted onions, carrots, garlic and some quickly getting old celery from my refrigerator. I knew I had a ring of turkey kielbasa which had been far too long in the freezer so I invited it to the party also.

I added chicken stock, dried oregano and basil, and after several hours of simmering, my soup tasted pretty good. I thought another can of diced tomatoes would be an excellent addition but there wasn't room in the 6 quart pot. Fortunately, the kielbasa slices turned out to be big party poopers. Although they added a nice smokey flavor to the soup, individually, they tasted terrible. They'd spent far too long in the freezer. So I removed the kielbasa slices. After another hour of simmering, there was plenty of room for the additonal can of diced tomatoes.



It's difficult to photogragh Pantry Clearing Lentil soup without it looking like, well, let's not go there.

Don't worry about the kielbasa, it  won't go to waste. The dogs have already and will continue to enjoy it as an addition to their kibble and as training treats.



No worries for my 7 Grain Bread either. It never fails me. It's a meal in itself.




I rated my soup a 6 on a scale of 1-10. Percy thought it was a 10.



Knitting

I'm so far behind in my Christmas knitting, don't even ask.



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Sunday, December 06, 2009

Catching Up



Must I? It's raining so hard.




Wheee!




Hey, that was fun!


Photos by Great Dane Photos