Excuses excuses, I know, but here are mine: I work too much, too many crazy hours, and I've fallen out of practice of cooking my meals.

Don't get me wrong, I prepare food. But I've stopped my ritual cooking. My passion for food and it's preparation has fallen secondary to too many other priorities.

Once upon a time I loved spending hours devouring cookbooks before hitting the farmers market and truly getting creative with our family meals. I collect cookbooks and flipping through their pages I find a passion for creativity in me. I'm compelled and challenged by the flavors and colors. Recreating and creating for my family meals once gave me real purpose. These days it falls into the background and peeks out it's head when we are hosting guests (rare) or I'm really in a dark place and need lifting (cooking is cathartic for me in a real way). I realized last week that I desperately want to change that. And change comes bit by bit, right? I'm going to start small. At least one "big" meal a week and a little more effort into my quickie dinners after class. A tiny bit of timing and prep will get me back on track I think!

So I'm back in the game people! Fall is here, my favorite time to throw on some fuzzy socks and an oversized sweatshirt and get in the kitchen.

This soup is the perfect autumn dinner. It's chock full of protein and carotenoids along with grounding whole grains. Easy to make in advance (and reheat when I get home from class starving). I topped it with some salted plain green yogurt and then drizzled with some good olive oil. And before I poured it into the bowl I placed a heaping serving of brown rice and quinoa cooked together.

Here's how I made the soup:

Ingredients-

1c French yellow lentils

1c chopped onion

1c chopped carrot

1 bag frozen butternut squash

1 veggie bullion

filtered water

sea salt to taste

olive oil

In a heavy bottomed pot heat 2 tblsp of the olive oil.
Add the onion and carrot with a sprinkle of the sea salt and cook until browned.
Add the squash, bullion, and lentils and over with water 2 fingers higher than the top of the mixture.
Bring it to a boil then down to a simmer and cover.
Cook for 1 hour or until veggies and lentils are very soft.
With an immersion blender, blend until smooth (or desired smoothness, I like mine a little chinky).
Top with salted yogurt, grains, toasted almonds, drizzle with olive oil...whatever sounds yummy to you!

French Lentil Soup with Salted Yogurt