Leftover lentil soup

     For a while now, I have been wanting to make a lentil soup.  I figured it should be pretty easy, delicious and simple to make.  Well, I finally followed my own advice of easy soup making (i.e., just make it up!) and made lentil soup.  I will have to admit that I did look at quite a few recipes to get an idea of what they put in it.  However, the finally choice of ingredients was mine and mine alone.  Why do I call it leftover lentil soup?  Because I kind of put whatever I had on hand into the soup.  I can't tell you the exact proportions as I just eyeballed it, but the recipe went something like this:

Leftover lentil soup

Ingredients:
6 cups chicken stock
lentils (1 cupish?)
carrots, cut up
red onion, chopped
leftover brown rice (cupish?)
ham, cut into squares (1/2 cupish??)
thyme
salt and pepper to taste
bay leaf
Italian seasoning
olive oil

Procedure:
1) Cook the onions and carrots in the olive oil until they soften.  I like to put the onions in first and then the carrots.
2) Add in the rest of the ingredients (except the rice) and simmer for about 30 minutes.
3) Taste, adjust the seasoning if you desire and add in the rice.  Let it cook for another couple of minutes or so so the rice has time to warm up.
4) Enjoy!

It is even more delicious the next day, as everything has had a chance to marinade in the flavors.  I ended up accidentally adding in a lot of thyme, but it really tasted great.  The lentils really soaked up a lot of the excess moisture, so it is now more lentils than soup.  But it is still delicious!

Cooking in the pot

Mmmm...