Lentil/yentl

Smitten Kitchen posted yet another lentil soup recipe on her blog the other day. It made me chuckle, remembering that my late/former/ex-husband would never eat lentils. His reason for not eating lentils was that he didn't like the word--it sounded too much like yentl. Don't ask me to explain. His rationalizations often eluded me. I was a mere mortal.

So for all those years in the kitchen I never cooked lentils. But now I'm unmarried, making up for lost time, and so wild and crazy that I cook many different colors of lentils in a variety of dishes. Some people get sports cars or artificial breasts or they get into line dancing when they're newly single. I start cooking lentils.

I'm not going to re-post Smitten Kitchen's recipe--Lentil Soup with Sausage, Chard, and Garlic--because you can go directly to the source at http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2013/01/lentil-soup-with-sausage-chard-and-garlic/. I highly recommend you try it--it's warm and comforting and quite beautiful in its homely lentily way. I used kale because I couldn't find Swiss chard in the grocery store. The only variation I made was to slice the sausages instead of removing the casing and crumbling the meat. And--horror--I did not do the toasted garlic topping that was highly recommended. It might be great but I fear garlic in large quantities.

My late/former/ex-husband wouldn't let me cook with garlic at all. He claimed he was allergic to garlic. It's a wonder I cooked anything when I was married. No lentils, no garlic, no avocado or tuna or Brussels sprouts or buckwheat or anything spicy. I think I'm going to search for a recipe for a firey hot tuna buckwheat casserole with Brussels sprouts and avocado and lots of garlic. That'll show him.