Soup and bread on a rainy day

This morning Honey decided to make yogurt from scratch using a very simple recipe discovered last week.  The idea was inspired by a page in The Pleasures of Cooking for One, which spoke to the ease of making  yogurt from scratch, an idea we've talked about but always been too scared to try. We found that turning the light on in our oven keeps the milk at the right temperature, around 100 degrees, so the process of turning milk into yogurt is a piece of cake. Honey loves plain, sour yogurt, and it's a great addition to the english muffin recipe we use every week. (Side note: we've used whole milk and skim milk and like the results of each -- it also makes an excellent substitute for sour cream.)

One of the reasons we needed more yogurt is that the english muffin recipe we use calls for yogurt (and we've tried numerous recipes -- this is our favorite).  Well, it doesn't exactly call for yogurt. It calls for buttermilk powder and we've modified that to mean "yogurt" since we think it tastes better.  Every week or every other week Honey goes through the day-long process to create these muffins because we eat them every morning for breakfast. Yum!

Since one of us was being so productive, the other decided that she, too, better find a way to be productive today. We always make a big pot of food Sunday evening and take the leftovers as lunches throughout the week, but we are going to a friend's for dinner tonight and so we needed to make something earlier in the day. We're also trying to watch what we eat in an effort to adopt better eating habits and maybe slim down a bit in the process, so we decided that this week's big meal would be soup.  Lentil and split pea soup, specifically.  I looked at numerous recipes and did not see exactly what I wanted, so I decided to make my own.

Rainy Day Lentil Soup
2 small onions, chopped
1 tbsp minced garlic
2 carrots, shredded
2 celery stalks, chopped
1 poblano pepper, chopped (opt.)
1 can diced tomatoes
1 c. lentils
1/2 c. yellow split peas
1/2 c. green split peas
1 tbsp olive oil
Juice of 1 lime
10 c. water

Spices, to taste, so approximately:
1 tbsp. Madras curry powder
1 tbsp. chicken bullion powder
1/2 tbsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp. chile powder
1/2 tsp. each cumin, ginger, paprika
1/4 tsp. each cinnamon, cardamon

Fry the onions and garlic in the oil until they start to caramelize. Add the pepper and fry for 1-2 more minutes, then add the water and bring to a boil.

When the water is boiling, add the lentils, split peas, curry powder, and chicken bullion. Let it cook on a low boil for about 30 minutes until the lentils and peas are almost fully cooked.

Add the remaining ingredients and cook for 10-15 more minutes (until the lentils are cooked and the flavors are well-blended).

Time for lunch. Yum!