Soup

Last night for dinner we had corned beef, which was pboiled with big chunks of beet and potato. It was excellent, and we had plenty of leftovers. I sliced the corned beef thin for sandwiches, but we also had a pot half-full with very flavorful broth and a lot of beets and potatoes still floating around. I didn't want to waste the broth, so I improvised a soup out of it, which turned out wonderfully.

I added about a cup of red lentils, one diced carrot, one diced stalk of celery, some dehydrated mushrooms and a little of the fattier bits of corned beef, and left it all to simmer for a couple hours. When it had reduced down to a thick soup consistency, I added a little cumin, cardamom, paprika and black pepper (it was already salty enough) and stirred it up, then took it off the heat to cool. We through it in the fridge to eat for dinner tonight -- I have no doubt that it'll be even better than it was last night, now that the flavors have had a chance to mellow and meld.

Despite already planning for soup for dinner, I decided to have soup for lunch today. It's been really cold in my office -- somebody keeps turning off the furnace for my section -- so I picked up some hot and sour soup at the Chinese place down the street. Its totally different from what we're having tonight, so I'm OK with the extra soupage. I'm also OK with this being a very banal post.