Italian Lentil Soup

I saw this recipe in Better Homes and Gardens magazine several years ago. It was one of the monthly recipe winners. I decided to try it, and our oldest daughter, who was about 2 at the time, decided it was one of her favorite meals. She still loves it. It's a perfect soup for a cold day, and doesn't take too long to make or prepare.

I've never been a fan of boiled cabbage. Honestly, unless it's in a spring roll or coleslaw I don't want much to do with cabbage. But this ... this recipe makes cabbage good. Really good.

I was able to find this recipe on the Better Homes and Gardens website, so I'll just let you view it from this link and then share the small changes I make.

You're going to be looking at an approximate prep time of about 15 minutes and a cook time of about 45 minutes.

Since I do have the dislike of cabbage in certain ways as described above, I usually use about 1/3, sometimes 1/4, of a small head of cabbage instead of half. I also add more onion than the original recipe calls for. I don't care for celery unless it's cooked a really long time, so I omit celery from this recipe.

I didn't have a can of tomato puree on hand when I made this last night so I used a 15-oz. can of tomato sauce and only 4 cups of water instead of 5. It was perfect. I also make sure the sugar I use is organic sugar, and the salt is sea salt.

Also, since I was making kale chips anyway last night, I set some aside to add to the soup for the last 20 minutes of cooking. It was delicious.

I usually serve this soup with some cornbread for a hearty meal but I was making these yummy kale chips last night, so I served the soup with kale chips and Schar snack crackers (not the table crackers, but they would have tasted great with the soup as well).

I hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

*And for your kale enjoyment, I'm linking this recipe up with some other gluten-free kale recipes here: http://www.bookofyum.com/blog/kale-week-tahini-kale-chip-recipe-and-dehydrator-review-6328.html