Wednesday Night Lentil Soup

Phil requires, on most nights, huge chunks of meat for a proper dinner and scorns such ridiculous things as soup (being a growing boy too full of energy) . Nate, having been brought up by a vegetarian, is thoroughly sick of lentils.

So, on Wednesday nights when they go out to play Kale and I take our chance to eat lentil soup. It goes something like this (some weeks):

cooking time: around 30 minutes
serves: around four, depending on whether any of them can eat as much as Phil.

ingredients:
some olive oil
1 onion
1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon minced chilli (more if you don't live with insufficiently macho boys)
2 carrots, sliced into circles
about 1 or 2 handfuls of red lentils (i don't have very big hands), rinsed
some tomatoes - one or two fresh, or a can of chopped tomatoes
1 teaspoon tomato paste
about 1 litre vegetable stock

preparation:
Chop the onion, crush the garlic. Fry in the oil with the chilli.
Add the lentils and carrots and cook over medium heat for a little while - maybe a minute or two.
Add the stock, cook for about 15-20 minutes.
Add the tomatoes and tomato paste (if you add them sooner the salt will make the lentils hard), cook for about another 10 minutes.

(Tonight is Kale's first turn at making the soup. I'm looking forward to it. Yum.)