Lentils

Today saw the first traditional lentil soup for quite a while.

Mix 12oz of red lentils and 1oz of left-over boiled white rice with around 3 pints of water, bring to the boil and simmer for an hour. Stand overnight.

In the morning, mix in maybe five stalks of celery, cross cut to maybe 5mm. Bring back to the boil and simmer for a further hour. Stir regularly as with this amount of lentils the mix is apt to stick.

At around noon, add six carrots, neither peeled nor washed, cross cut to maybe 10mm. Bring back to the boil and simmer. Stir regularly.

At around 1230, finely chop one clove of garlic and place in sauté pan with about 1oz butter (unsalted). Add two large onions, coarsely chopped. Add five rashers of back bacon (Heritage branded Danish from Costcutter, rather than the paper thin and very wet stuff sold from Sainsbury's), coarsely chopped. Put lid on and cook gently for about 15 minutes.

Add onions etc. to the lentils etc. around 1255, making the finished soup up to a little more than half a gallon in all. Serve at 1300 with brown bread.

We did half the half gallon in the first sitting. Very good it was too and the dead fly count was unusually low. Rounded out with a spot of date slice, made with block dates from the curiously named but useful Grape Tree.

PS: I associate to my childhood days when Sainsbury's was the second poshest grocer in town, selling, inter alia, bacon which was sliced off the flitch while you watched. My mother would not use the place as she thought that both the shop and its customers were far too up themselves. But she did take the travelling van from the first poshest, an old fashioned and expensive independent called Matthews, long gone. A shop I remember for the smell of its coffee roaster installed in one of its front windows.