Weekly Gourmet

Today is Tuesday. Probably Taco Tuesday for you, but for us, it's Lentil Soup With An Egg In It Tuesday a/k/a Vegetarian Torture Day! Don't stop reading! I swear, lentils are friends, not tiny beads of torture. They are a delicious, inexpensive source of protein with endless shelf lives. Paired with an egg? This is a DOUBLE protein meal if you think about it. Like putting a chicken wing on top of a hamburger patty. Or "surf and turf with a spoon," if you will. AND, since it's such a healthy dinner, I let everyone dip warm, crusty garlic bread in it. My kids are much more amenable to trying fearsome foods while their hands are filled with hunks of bread, like little edible carbohydrate safety blankets. Actually, the middle kid brought lentil soup to school in a pink princess thermos today. She may have a bit of a bathroom situation later tonight, but I still giggle thinking about her like a small Sicilian peasant child in a kerchief, spooning in her lentils, hoping...

  Today is Wednesday. It's freezing cold today. I really wanted something homey to warm us all up so I decided on an old staple: split pea soup. Very old- this is my grandma's recipe! My grandma was a simple cook. This is just a simple soup, only to be jazzed up after Easter, when one has a ham bone on hand. Adding the ham bone is so good that I used to fight my (elderly, feeble) great-aunts for it. My mom would have to split it so we could each have some for our split pea soup the following week. Oh Italian women. Don't ask me about the gizzards on Thanksgiving. Simple, meatless meals like this are what my first-generation Grandma from Sicily had to offer.   Grandma B's Split Pea Soup Ingredients  1 bag dried peas 8 cups water, chicken stock, vegetable stock, or a combo thereof  1 tsp. salt, more or less I say more. I doubled. Note on salt below. 1 T. olive oil 1 cup diced carrots, more or less I used 2 big ones. ¼ cup finely chopped onion, more or less I used half ...