French Lentil Soup with Tarragon and Thyme

French Lentil Soup with Tarragon and Thyme from page 141 Veganomicon was really tasty and different.  We don’t do a lot of cooking with tarragon.  It was a nice change and has a peppery taste.  This is the first thing that we have ever made with the little green speckled french lentils.  They have a distinct taste as well, so this was a nice to change it up a bit.  It is soy free, gluten free, low fat and supermarket friendly… and oh so delicious.

We made a loaf of bread to eat with it, so the kids ate a lot of that.  They do love fresh bread.  Who doesn’t?

Lentil Black Bean Dip

We can’t love anything more. This is a huge favorite of ours. We like it best with Xochil chips.  They are thin and crispy, with no preservatives, no cholesterol, no trans fats, no gluten, and no gmo. Lightly salted with sea salt, these chips are our favorite.  The are thin (what makes them awesome) so there ends up being a lot of little pieces that we typically put a bowl with lentil dip on top and eat with a fork… it is just that good.

Lentil Black Bean Dip

Recipe by Bunnies Love Carrots

Ingredients

1 cup lentils
5-6 green onions -  finely chopped
5 roma tomatoes- finely diced
1  15oz can black beans- well rinsed
4 oz can diced green chiles- with liquid
cilantro – a handful, finely chopped
6 oz fat-free catalina dressing

Xochitl Chips

tortilla chips- preferably Xochitl (bag shown at right)

Method

Take 1 cup uncooked lentils, rinse, cover with 4 cups cold water, bring to a boil, then cover, reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes, drain and rinse in cold water.  Add the other ingredients and done.

Notes

Roma tomatoes work best because they are more fleshy, less seeds, but this would probably be even more awesome (if that is possible) in the summer with some of the awesome tomatoes available.

As for the catalina dressing, we genuinely like the fat free better… add this to taste, but we typically do 3/4 of a small bottle- around 8 oz.  We typically use Kraft.  Adding the whole bottle of dressing might be tempting because it might seem a little dry at first.  Once the dip is able to sit for a bit it releases more moisture, so keep it slightly drier than you might expect.  Missing link: Catalina dressing is one of the only things that we buy that has high-fructose corn syrup.  It might be the only thing. Otherwise, it is just tomatoes and spices… who knew? The high fructose corn syrup explains a lot, since I have always thought of this dressing as way too sweet.  Does anyone know of another catalina dressing without high fructose corn syrup?