Hearty & Healthy Lentil and Barley Soup

When you've cooked a healthy, vegetable-filled soup for dinner, and your 17-year-old, junk-food-loving son says, 
     "Mom, have I told you that this is my favorite soup? Can I have some more?" 
Then you KNOW that you've found a winning recipe! It doesn't get much better than that! 

I found this recipe originally in the Lean & Free 2000 Plus cookbook. I only altered it slightly. If you can't find pearled barley in the rice section of your local grocery store, it should be available in the bulk foods section of stores such as Fred Meyer or Winco. Take a few minutes to chop your vegetables in the morning, put all ingredients in the crockpot on LOW, and the delicious soup will be ready to eat by dinnertime.

I use my amazing Cuisinart food processor to pulse-chop the veggies

Lentil and Barley Soup

Yields: 6-8 servings

1 c     Dried lentils (any type)
1 c     Pearled barley (or other whole-grain barley)
1 can Petite diced tomatoes (about 16 oz.)
1 c     Chopped onion
1 c     Chopped or sliced celery
3/4 c  Chopped or sliced carrots
2 TB  Soy sauce
1/2 ts Pepper
1 ts    Dried dill weed
1 ts    Garlic powder
10 c   Chicken broth or bouillon

Place all ingredients in a 5-quart slow cooker or crockpot. Set covered crockpot to LOW and leave it to cook all day, 8-10 hours, until vegetables, grain and lentils are tender. Serve warm. Season individual bowls of soup with Tabasco sauce, to taste (optional), and garnish them with freshly-chopped Italian flat-leaf parsley (optional).

Note: The soup could also be cooked in a large saucepan or 5-quart stockpot on the stove top. It would need to simmer for about an hour.

Creamy Potato-Cheese Soup

Cooking for a crowd - expecting 100 wedding guests

In preparation for the wedding dinner, I wanted to prepare a really tasty soup that would appeal to a wide variety of ages. In the month before the wedding, I prepared each of the potato soup recipes in my cookbook, to compare them. Our family had some variety of potato soup for dinner quite a few times that month, while my husband and I decided which we liked best. We settled on this Creamy Potato-Cheese Soup recipe. I had hoped that we could make a lot of it ahead of time, freeze it, and then warm it in crockpots for the event, but none of the recipes I tried froze and re-warmed well. They all lost their texture, and a lot of the flavor too. So we decided to prep them all in the morning before the dinner. We prepared 6 recipes of the potato soup (in 3 crockpots) and 6 recipes of a carrot soup (in 3 crockpots). That's why we had 6 crockpots lined up on the countertop. Another lady brought a third soup, so I only had to make enough for approximately 66 servings. It was quite a production! I'll share the carrot soup with you in a future post. I didn't quite plan enough time to prepare and cook all of those soups, so it came right down to the wire - whether or not they would be ready on time. Fortunately, to my immense relief, we finished them in the nick of time, they tasted great and were a big hit at the dinner.

Creamy Potato-Cheese Soup

Yield: 6-8 servings
4  Potatoes, cut in 1/2" cubes (abt 4 cups)
4 C Water
1 C Chopped carrots
1 C Chopped celery
1 C Chopped onions
4 tsp Chicken bouillon granules
1/2 C Butter
1/2 C Flour
4 C Half & Half
6 oz Swiss cheese, grated
4 oz Sharp cheddar cheese, grated
1/4 tsp Freshly-ground pepper, to taste

Cook vegetables in water and bouillon until tender. Meanwhile, in a separate pan, melt the butter. Add flour to make a roux. Simmer for 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly, then slowly add the Half & Half. Stir in the cheeses. Keep heat moderate, so that the cheese melts, but the mixture doesn't boil and cause the cream to separate. Add cheese sauce to the cooked vegetables. Add pepper to taste. Serve warm.