Soup Sundays

If you've been sitting in proximity of the Campbells at Heartland Fellowship on a Sunday this fall, you might have noticed a particular smell. It's not a bad smell, in fact in context it's lovely, but just not something that we're striving for in our daily hygiene. We smell like soup. From Mike and I, to our trendy Korean teenager, right down to baby, you can't miss that soupy scent. Ironically the soup-link is not from our name, Campbell; it is actually a side-effect of my Dutch heritage, and given the amount of Dutch blood in Chilliwack, I can guarantee we're not the only ones with this particular eau de cologne.

The love of soup is, along with the love of a good deal, in the Dutch DNA. A Sunday, just isn't a Sunday without a piping post-church bowl. When we first started scouting out Chilliwack as our future home, we were introduced to the soup of an expert soup chef, none other than my Dutch Soup-Nazi Uncle, Jan Van Wyk. It was at a post-church lunch that Finn first learned, from one of my triplet cousins (Mark), the art of slurping the final soup dredges from the side of the tipped bowl.

At our house Grace has labeled my beef-vegetable soup as Sunday Soup, alas, that recipe is difficult to transcribe as I have a different variation each Sunday depending on my vegetable crisper and particular whims. The soup that I have been feasting on lately is a simple lentil soup. The key to this soup is to combine your veggies, lentils, and broth and to let the whole mixture simmer for a few hours. This results in a thick and lovely soup, reminiscent of a dahl. This is actually a riff on my pea soup recipe, when I was out of split peas I substituted red lentils and added a shot of cumin. Delicious. There is no way to get an attractive picture of this soup, so I've included my little soup-eater in the shot. I made a batch of this soup on the weekend and have heating it up for lunches during the week.

Lentil Soup
(A flexible recipe, you can play with the quantities and types of veggies depending on your preferences and what you have on hand)


1 cup red lentils
3 chopped carrots
3 chopped stalks of celery
3 clove minced garlic
1 chopped onion
1/3 cup tomato paste OR several chopped tomatoes
6 cups chicken stock (I use Epicures chicken base)
1 tsp salt
good pinch pepper
1/2 tsp cumin

Combine ingredients, bring to a simmer and then simmer at low for as much time as you have - 2 - 3 hours is ideal. The soup should be nice and thick. Taste for seasoning, if it is a bit bland add salt, a pinch at a time until you get it right. Note that if you use chicken stock with sodium then I would decrease the amount of salt in the recipe.