Raise your hand if you think you are getting enough veggies and whole grains in your diet?  Anybody?  Seeing no hands, I’m going to assume that we could all use more veggies and whole grains in our diet.  Doesn’t that seem to be the mantra of the health food movement lately?  Eat more vegetables.  Eat more whole grains.  This super simple, delicious soup is the perfect answer to that seemingly hefty requirement.

Advertising this soup as the Healthiest Thing You Will Eat This Week does it a disservice.  It also happens to be creamy, chewy, filling and perfectly delicious.  It’s the kind of soup you would order at a restaurant, fall in love with immediately, tell all your friends about and then drive twenty-minutes out of your way to pick up on the way home for dinner one night.  It’s that good.

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Let’s face it, lentils are not sexy.  If all the cool foods like Dulce de Leche and Creme Fraiche got together for a party, Lentils would not be invited.  They are boring looking and even the name lentils sounds like the weird girl in the corner that no one wants to be seen talking to. Lentils are the nerdy, socially awkward, bowling ball-shaped runts of the food world.

To make up for their lack of social prowess, lentils are forced to bring many health benefits to the table in order to get noticed.  They are high in fiber, low in calories (and on the glycemic index!), extremely filling and will soak up the flavors of whatever liquid you decide to cook them in.  Paired with fresh spinach, smoky kielbasa and a mix of fresh mushrooms this lentil soup will quickly become your best friend while helping you stick to your new, healthful resolutions without having to sacrifice flavor!

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Having never worked with leeks, I was always so intrigued to hear them described as “creamy” on cooking shows (ok, mostly Top Chef).  How can an over-sized scallion be creamy?  It seems counter intuitive, against nature, and frankly, unbelievable.  Thoroughly intrigued nonetheless, I began inspecting leek recipes for one to sufficiently spark my interest.  As someone who doesn’t eat a lot of cream-based soups, the idea of using this allegedly creamy vegetable to achieve a smooth soup base was very appealing.  Plus, I’ve been dying to try out the new immersion blender my boyfriend just bought me!

The most common pairing I came across was leeks and potatoes.  I generally try to avoid potatoes (they aren’t South Beach friendly!) and I wasn’t happy at the idea of wasting these creamy leeks in a mess of pureed potatoes.  After reviewing a couple different leek soup recipes, I decided to venture out on my own.  The resulting creating is a hybrid of a couple different recipes, with my own added twist.  I’m proud to report that the result was utterly delicious!!

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After relocating from Southern California to a much colder climate a few years ago, every winter when the temperature would dip below my comfort level I would find myself developing the most inexplicable craving for chili.  Despite having attended several chili cook-offs during my childhood (yes, I am actually admitting to that), I never developed much of a taste for chili.  It was either too spicy, too bland, too meaty, too tomato-y.  Now, I’m a fan of tomatoes, meat, spices and beans but it was always too something and I was never happy with the result.  Plus, it inevitably called for hours of cooking and loads of specialty ingredients which felt horribly wasted when the result was such a let down.

These predicable disappointments aside, every winter I would bravely ventured into chili recipe territory in the hopes that some new recipe would set my chili streak straight and each year I was again sorely disappointed . . . until this year.  I came across this gorgeous photo at Smitten Kitchen and was suddenly optimistic that this might be the chili recipe to cure my years of bad chili luck.  When my boyfriend informed me that he is a major chili fan, that was all the encouragement I needed.

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We are major mushroom fans.  Sauteed mushrooms, stuffed mushrooms, sliced mushrooms all make frequent appearances in the kitchen.  It’s been so cold lately that I’ve been looking for more soup recipes and when I saw Kalyn’s Double Mushroom Soup I knew it would only be a matter weeks before I was making it myself.

The trickiest part was locating the dried mushrooms. Not a single employee at our decent-sized grocery store could say whether they carried dried mushrooms and if they did where they would be located. Luckily, I have an extremely patient boyfriend who searched high and low until finding a box of dried porcini mushrooms.  I had never worked with dried mushrooms before but was pleasantly surprised to find that the rehydration process was painless and they added a nice extra mushroom-y dimension to the soup.

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