Meatless Monday: Curry Vegetable Lentil Soup

Happy Monday, my friends!! Today I am starting a new feature and joining in on Meatless Mondays by posting a meatless meal idea with guidelines on how to make it.

Meatless Monday is a global movement that encourages people to reduce meat in their diet once a week for their health and the health of the planet.

Why Meatless
“Meatless Monday can make a big difference for your health and the health of our planet. Replacing meat with plant-based choices each Monday can offer numerous health benefits and help you take action against climate change by reducing your carbon footprint and helping you conserve precious environmental resources”

Every day is a meatless day here for us, and I know how sometimes it can be a challenge to come up with different options for meatless meals. So I am going to be on the lookout for some different meatless ideas and share them here with you all.

I am not a recipe creator, and recipes are usually stored in my head, but it’s pretty busy in there, and now I need to be writing them down. I don’t think I ever really followed a recipe completely before when it comes to cooking so I won’t call this a recipe but more guidelines on how to make it. So I can’t add any guarantee on this recipe and you will need to add some of your cooking skills to prepare this soup.

One of my favorite foods is soups and now that the weather is turning a little cooler, I have decided to get back in the soup making groove. Soup is one of the easiest meals to make meatless. When I make soup I do some batch cooking and make a few different ones at a time and for freezing for my mother-in-law.

Today’s meatless meal is Curry Vegetable Lentil soup

1 onion
2 carrots
1 red pepper
1 potato
1 tsp of salt
1 tsp of Italian spice
1 tsp of garlic powder

1can of tomatoes
1 tbsp curry powder
6 cups of vegetable broth

1 sweet potatoe

1 cup of cauliflower
1 can of lentils

fresh spinach, parley and basil

For my batch making soup, I start by chopping the vegetables and adding to a pot with 1 tbsp. of oil and butter along with the first amount of spices. Cook on medium heat for about 10 mins stirring every few minutes. I keep an eye on it and add more butter as needed. The key is getting the butter taste in the vegetables. This will add flavour to the soup.

Add the tomatoes and cook for another 10 mins. Add vegetable broth and curry powder and cook till vegetables are almost tender. If I am freezing some, I will add about 2 more cups of broth. I like a little spice to my soup, so I add the same amount of spices as above to the vegetables in the broth. As it simmers, I taste the soup often and add about 1/2 tsp more of the spices at a time till I get the flavours I want.

Add the sweet potato and then the cauliflower. Add the lentils and simmer for a few minutes. Top with spinach, fresh basil and parley.

Of course I can’t leave this post without mentioning a book. This is what Lindsay and I are currently reading! Have you read it or is it on your list to read?

Please let me know what you think of this post and if my guidelines are helpful or way too confusing to follow. Should I stick to a recipe when posting?