My Vegetable Blog

A frightfully cold weekend has made me appreciate some very simple, but important, things - toasty slipper boots, a dog who loves to snuggle and the perfect winter soup.

First of all, the slipper boots - yes, they are both slippers and boots. They are fabulous and I have pretty much been wearing them all weekend. The dog? She is pretty weather-sensitive. On a hot summer day, she'd rather not be touched at all, but when the wind chill is in the -20 degree range, which it has been for the last couple of days, she prefers to lay her 60-some pound body on top of whatever willing human she can find and soak up all of their warmth. I don't mind it so much.

Oh, and the soup. Melissa Clark wrote about it in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago, and while I've never been a huge fan of lentil soup, I was pretty sure I would like this one. And I was so right. I picked up the red lentils at Al Khayan Bakery in neighboring Albany Park on Friday night (it's my new favorite local store) and got to work on the soup Saturday morning.

There are just a handful of ingredients, but they work perfectly together. I followed the recipe pretty closely, only substituting smoked paprika (hot) for the chili powder.

And I ate each bowl with a lemon wedge on the side, as well as some homemade whole-wheat pita chips. Hearty, smoky with the brightness of lemon - the perfect cure for the winter blues.

Here's the recipe.