A New Lentil Soup
and What I Ate on my Autumn Vacation
Happy January! I hope you are all keeping warm. It’s been a particularly cold one a lot of places, and I feel for all of you with snow to shovel.
As you can guess, our winters here in Louisiana are much milder, though much of our plumbing and infrastructure isn’t built for prolonged freezes. In the past two weeks, we finally got our type of winter storm, which forced us to bring in our plants, insulate the outside faucets, and drip the water in the sink, but didn’t drop a bit of snow. Nevertheless, when the temps fell below freezing, we Southerners felt pretty cold, so I’ve been helping keep the family warm by cooking lots of hearty soups.
The latest is this Lentil, Mushroom, and Farro Soup, posted today on my blog. In that post I mention how a meal I had on vacation has made me obsessed with mushrooms. I used both dried and fresh mushrooms in this soup, so if you’re a mushroom lover, jump over there to print the recipe. If you don’t like mushrooms, you could always leave them out and make it a tasty Lentil and Farro Soup.
In October, my husband and I took a much-needed vacation to New England. We spent most of our week away near the Berkshires and on Cape Cod, where we had some delicious vegan food, but the food highlight came on our final night, in Providence, RI.
We’d learned of Plant City from our server in a great Indian restaurant in Northampton, MA, called India House. When we asked her for vegan options, we started chatting and she told us her sister is vegan, and her sister’s favorite place to go is an amazing vegan food hall in Providence called Plant City. With 4 different restaurants and a bakery, coffee shop and bar, it sounded too amazing to pass up.
So when we left Cape Cod, we drove straight to Providence and had lunch in Plant City’s “American bistro,” New Burger. (I had a burger with truffles, yum!) We liked it so much that we went back that night to Double Zero, their Italian restaurant. That’s when my mushroom obsession began, with the Tagliatelle with Wild Mushrooms. It was recommended by our server (always listen to your server) for its house-made pasta and rich, woodsy mushrooms. Mmmmmmmmmm. I am really bad at describing flavors, so you’ll just have to take my word that this was one of the most delicious dishes I’ve ever tasted.
In our small town, anything but button mushrooms and portobellos are impossible to find, except when a mushroom grower comes to the weekly farmers’ market. So I haven’t been able to recreate this dish yet. I don’t think dried mushrooms would do it justice. But the combination of dried and fresh mushrooms has been perking up my other cooking, like this soup. So please give it a try, and if you’re not a big mushroom fan, check out one of my other hearty soup recipes.
Stay warm, and if you’re ever within 100 miles of Providence, get yourself to Plant City!
Susan
Lentils are where it's at health wise. Looks like a great recipe!
Yum Yum susan👏👏👏👏😍😍💕