Cold, dreary Sundays

Yesterday hit a high of  a mere 17 degrees. I was cold!

The only cure (at least for me) is something cooked in my Le Creuset pot. That, and wearing socks. I just put some on for the first time in 3 months. I'd forgotten how comfortable they are.

Back to the pot. It's where comfort food lives.

My baby

We don't have a ton of food in the apartment right now, but I knew I wanted to use three things: the leftover hunk of spicy Portuguese sausage from last night's pizza fest, the gorgeous rainbow chard I couldn't resist buying on Friday, and some of the lentils I had in the pantry.

Look at all that gorgeous paprika veining.

Sausage

Chard

Lentils

Really, it had to be soup, didn't it?

On week nights I wouldn't bother with accompaniments for the soup, but it's a Sunday (a long weekend Sunday at that) and I felt like dinner deserved something extra, so I whipped up some Potato-Goat Cheese Biscuits (tragically without green onion).

Not terrible looking from the top...

Either my baking powder is old, or I did these TOTALLY wrong. They rose a tiny bit, but not much. And I think I should have used the smoked Gouda (lactose free for the lactard in everyone) instead of the Casablanca goat cheese (a gorgeous snow white not-too-goaty cheese). A more intense flavour would have been good.

But from the side... well... hockey puckish.

So that was the biscuits. On to the soup!

One of the things about cleaning out your crisper for food is, you (inevitably) are missing a key ingredient.

Onion - half of one in a baggy
Carrots - gigantic bag from Costco
garlic - 2 sad cloves
stock - bouillon cubes
Portuguese sausage - slick with paprika laced fat!
Swiss chard - ½ bunch left
Lentils - both green and French (mm! Two textures!)
Celery - ...

Celery?

Damn, no celery. We'll just replace that with... erm... mushrooms! Yes, that'll totally replicate the flavours.

Okay, it won't. But, it'll still work.

Throw it all in a pot.

Don't forget the secret ingredient:

You gotta throw in sherry.

And voila! Sunday dinner.

Mmm. Soupy.

Good bye cold!