Lovely Soup and Salad

Tuesday's dinner was delicious. I decided that a crappy, rainy, cool Spring night would be perfect for soup. Being an avid gardener (even if my only outdoor space is containers), I had a few varieties of lettuces growing already. On my porch, lives a little window box full of lettuce, chard, spinach and bok choi. I may move the bak choi to it's own container because it tends to get GIANT.

The Red Sails lettuce tends to do REALLY well. I decided that it would be great to have a salad from the stuff from this box! It's called red sails because the leaves are tinted red, but mine only have red spots. I was also growing a variety of romaine called Speckles, but I find that it's not as vigorous as Red Sails or Buttercrunch. It's still pretty to look at, because it has little pretty red spots on the light green leaves. Add some sliced mandarins and it's a perfect salad.

The lentil soup was amazing...because it had bacon in it. Every thing is better with bacon. Lentils are a really great thing to have around because they are one of the few dry legumes that you can buy and cook without having to soak them first. They are ready to cook right away. They are a very nutritional food and they are relatively inexpensive. A lentil soup can be prepared in less than an hour and leftovers are always better the day after!