I suspect bee keeping may just be my coolest hobby to date.  I’m not sure just yet if it tops the belly dancing I did in my early 20s, but it’s pretty darn close and a good bit more practical (in most settings at least).  After just one afternoon of working with the hives, I’m hooked.  All I can think about since is “BEES!”

Actually, my first act as bee keeper was to deconstruct a hive that had died over the winter.  I was fortunate enough to get the help of Matt, a current coworker who has some very applicable experience (he took care of the same hives just a few years back), otherwise I wouldn’t have had a clue what to do. We started by taking apart the “supers”, which are the stack of boxes that provide the exterior framework for the hives; in other words the outside walls.  Then we wiggled out the comb frames, some of which were filled with dead bees, some that were just plain empty, and, most importantly, some that still had lots of honey in them.  

Since this hive was dead, we didn’t have to worry about getting stung for this part of the process.  Later we did add a new “super” to the living hive and checked out its status.  Working with the live bees required the classic bee keeper’s gear (netted hat) and an old-fashioned smoker to control the buzz factor.  Watching the bees when the smoke hit them was pretty interesting…as Matt described it they dive for the combs of honey, jam their heads right in there and drink themselves silly, trying to take as much honey with them since they think the hive is on fire.  However, since they drink so much honey that their bellies are literally bulging, they can’t fly straight, and thus they become much less of a threat to the bee keeper. 

The living hive was doing quite well from the looks of the inside of it: plenty of bees and plenty of honey.  We left the honey in there though since taking honey from live bees is a bit messier than taking it from the dead ones.  So back to the task of deconstructing the dead hive.  I had a lot of questions about why the hive was dead, what with the recent scourge of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in the bee world.  As we deconstructed it, we could rule out some answers and possibly support others. 

The bees had not starved to death since there was a decent amount of honey in the combs still.  It is unlikely that there was a disease that wiped them out since the other living hive was only two feet away and it’s very healthy.  It is also unlikely that the queen abandoned ship and thus took the rest of the bees with her since there were a few dozen dead bees in the hive itself among the combs.  So, Matt’s theory at least and the one I’m going along with since I don’t know much myself and it makes sense:  the bees froze in the winter.  Normally a hive will generate enough heat to keep the temperature inside above freezing.  However, if the numbers in the hive dwindled for some reason (mites are known offenders for raiding hives), they might not have had enough body heat to keep the rest of them alive. 

I have so much research I want to do now on bee keeping and how hives thrive and how hives die.  But for the time being I had to content myself with cleaning up the combs of the dead hive (we reused some in the new “super” added to the living hive) and harvesting the honey.  Typically honey is harvested once or twice a year and in very large quantities that require a fair amount of large equipment and time.  This harvest, my very first, was not typical.  Instead of fancy equipment, I used a knife to cut off the wax cap of the combs and to scrape out the honey into a cake pan. Then I used a mesh strainer set over a soup pot to strain out the comb bits.  It was a sticky job, but a fun one!

All told, I got about a quart and one half pint of honey from five or six combs.  And what wonderfully sweet and floral honey it is!  Some of the best I’ve had, aside from that which I got in northern Portugal this past spring.  Besides just licking it off my fingers, I’m debating what to do with it to really showcase its flavor and silky texture.  Vanilla honey ice cream maybe?  Do you have any good ideas?  It seems almost a shame to melt this beautiful liquid amber into a cup of tea, although it’ll be quite good for that too, I’m sure. 

I’m learning a very valuable life lesson these days.  Change, for the better or for the worse, is strangely easier to deal with in larger quantities. I’ve already mentioned the big change I made recently in careers. If I’d had my druthers, that change would have been more than enough for me for a year or so.  But following close behind it, much to my initial dread, was another big change.  D and I bought a house and moved into it this past weekend.  So now, in about a month’s time, both my job and my home are completely different. 

Moving to the new house was looming in my head for the past month.  Don’t get me wrong, I helped pick it out so I was happy with the new house.  I just didn’t want to leave the old one, what with the four years of junk stored up in the basement and the kitchen I’d come to love so much.  I don’t think I posted many pictures on here of my old kitchen, but it was adorably retro with red walls and a decidedly Asian flair that I had carefully cultivated.  I’d moved in there while I was still single so everything was arranged just the way I liked it.  The one downside though was its size: 8 feet by 10 feet.  Ouch.  When we picked out the new house, the kitchen was top priority for me. 

Well, my dear readers, I’ve made the move and I’m loving it!  This new kitchen of mine is well-appointed and so very spacious!  Look at that counter space!  And there’s room for a table and chairs with plenty of room left over for walking through! What a novel idea!

After tearing off some pretty hideous wallpaper in both the kitchen and dining room and painting the latter the familiar shade of red that would pay homage to my old kitchen, I went in search of sustenance (seriously, do you all know how labor intensive striping old wallpaper is??  I was hungry!).  Sitting above my sink was a glass of chives in blossom that I’d gotten from Farmer Dave on my visit to opening day of Headhouse Market.  I nibbled on a few of the blossoms and decided to roll with that flavor and see where it took me.  Rummaging through boxes of packed food stuffs, I found my red lentil stash.  Bingo!  A little goat cheese and I had myself a very refreshing and filling little meal. 

Want to know the best part?  Well, delicious results aside, I most enjoyed just strewing about dirty dishes in my new kitchen.  I know that sounds really strange but when you’ve been accustomed to a three by two feet section of counter and are suddenly given yards and yards of it, it’s very liberating to plop down dirty dishes all over the place since you don’t have to worry about tidying up so you can chop the chives after you’ve crumbled the cheese. 

Ahhhhhh, change is a very good thing indeed!

Lentils with Goat Cheese & Chives
A Straight from the Farm Original

1 C. red lentils
1 ¾ C. water
4 oz. goat cheese
Chives with blossoms
Sea salt and coarse black pepper

Rinse lentils and discard any discolored ones.  Combine lentils and water in a heavy saucepan.  Bring to a boil, lower heat, cover and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes or until liquid is absorbed.  Remove from heat, fluff, and place in the refrigerator until chilled.

Fluff chilled lentils again and mound on a serving plate.  Crumble goat cheese on top.  Pull chive blossoms apart and scatter over lentils.  Chop up the green parts of the chives and also scatter over the lentils.  Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper and serve. 

(serves 3-4)

Sometimes it’s the little things that tickle a person.  Things that make the corners of your mouth turn up just a notch and put a gleam in your eyes.  That’s what happened when Farmer Dave asked me to play around with a new crop on Weavers Way Farm.  I was tickled because it was, whether he realized it to be or not, a little pat on the back that said “Hey, you’re pretty much an expert at figuring out how to use farm produce so naturally I’d ask you to create a recipe for me.”  

This mystery ingredient, however, was completely new to me too.  Edible Chrysanthemum is known by many names (Garland Chrysanthemum, Crown Daisy, Shingiku, Choy Suy Green, Tong Ho, Ssukgat, etc.) around the world and is used mostly in Asian dishes, from what I could gather.  It is different from the ornamental mums you put out in your flower beds or deck containers each fall.  Its leaves do look similar though.  Farmer Dave was asking me to play around with the stuff since he didn’t know what to tell customers at market who asked how to use it.  Well, those customers weren’t the only ones without a clue.

I scoured all of my cookbooks, then moved on to my recipe clippings, and finally hit up the internet and still wasn’t finding anything very useful.  I was a bit annoyed at myself because I know I’d clipped an article once upon a time with a recipe for edible chrysanthemum, but I guess it got lost along the way since I hadn’t ever found any to buy and try. 

Lacking any solid guidance, other than reading it’s generally used in soups, salads, and stir-fries, I ate some of the leaves raw to get a feel for its flavors.  I’d liken it to a slightly less bitter sorrel or a more tender and bitter chicory.  In the end, I decided soup it would be, although it made for a tasty salad addition. 

The resulting potage was quite flavorful but not something for the picky eater.  If you like earthy green flavors like seaweed, you’ll adore this soup. If you immediately scrunched up your nose when you read “seaweed”, you’ll be happier just tossing edible chrysanthemum in with some other salad greens and enjoying its mellow bite in raw form.  Another plus that shouldn’t go without mentioning is that this soup is so choked full of vitamins and minerals, you could skip your vitamin supplements for a week after eating just one bowl of this stuff. 

I’ll be getting another bunch of chrysanthemum next time I’m back over to the farm and I think I’ll try a stir-fry with it next time or maybe a quiche since that worked so well for sorrel.

A general word about the recipe:  I just call for bunches of each green.  I know that’s a rather vague quantity but really you can just use what you have on hand.  Or, if you can’t get the elusive edible chrysanthemum, just add extras of the others. 

CHRYSANTHEMUM SOUP
A Straight from the Farm Original

2 T. butter
2 T. extra virgin olive oil
2 shallots, minced
1 bunch chives
1 bunch garland (edible) chrysanthemum
1 bunch sorrel
1 bunch swiss chard
2 c. fresh or thawed frozen peas
2 c. water
3 T. heavy cream
Salt and pepper

Wash chrysanthemum leaves, sorrel and swiss chard.  Remove stems from all the greens and cut out the large rib of the swiss chard.  Roughly chop greens and the chives and set aside.

Place butter and oil in a heavy saucepan over medium heat.  When butter is melted, add the minced shallots and sauté until softened, about three minutes.  Add the greens and peas, stirring to coat with butter and oil.  Add a little salt and the water.  Cover and simmer for about 8-10 minutes, until peas are tender.

Ladle the soup into a food processor or blender, discarding a ladleful or two of the “broth”, and process until smooth.  If desired, strain processed soup before returning to the saucepan.  Over low heat, stir soup and add cream and salt and pepper to taste.  Serve garnished with chive blossoms and/or croutons. 

(serves 3-4)

Aw, they’re so cute!  Look at my little babies!  All the seeds I put in trays last Monday have germinated, much to my relief. 

I tacked on the “much to my relief” part there because I had a few casualties in the “directly sown department” out in the garden.  Both my radishes and my sugar snap peas seemed to have failed in that 80+ degree arid weather we’ve been having here in southeastern Pennsylvania.   I knew it was a long shot for the peas in particular, but I had thought the radishes would make a go of it.  Another culprit for them might have been the clay soil turning rock hard as it baked in the sun, keeping the little leaves from poking their heads out. 

But enough about the what-might-have-beens and more about these little cuties.  Now that they have germinated, I’ll be watching closely for their true leaves to appear (the ones that come after their initial set of leaves, sorta like baby teeth).  Once that happens, I’ll be thinning out any extras that are crowding the trays and then start hardening them off in about another two or three weeks, depending on each crop.

Of all the little thrills and victories in the garden, nothing quite beats seeing the seedlings come up!  I’m now dreaming of arrangements of chartreuse green “Envy” zinnias and the beautiful blue salvia I just bought from the nursery.  Sigh….  

That trip to the nursery was quite fun in-and-of-itself.  There were little wagons to pull around that I got to fill with all manner of perennials, annuals, and biennials.  My favorite find was a new herb (to me) called stevia that I am in love with now.  Can’t wait to get back in the kitchen and start making some sweet dishes with it.  By the way, I swear there’ll be a new recipe up on here sometime soon!  Thanks for being understanding about the little lull.

How are your gardens doing this spring?  Is everyone as dry as we are here?  There’s been only an inch of rain in the last six-seven weeks.  Now’s a great time to think about hunting out more native plants for your gardens since native varieties are often much more drought tolerant than those species that have been brought in from elsewhere. 

It rained!!  Finally!  April was a very dry and hot month up until the last weekend.  And while it may have been pouring kittens and puppies outside, a nicely organized and supplied potting shed was at hand.  As such I got several seeds started on April 28th, including two varieties (’Polar Bear’ and ‘Granny’s Bouquet’) of zinnias for my cutting garden, a mix of cherry tomatoes, a mix of heirloom tomatoes, lemon cucumbers, round zucchini, and some chamomile for my tea garden.  

I know it’s okay to direct sow the cucumbers and zucchini, but thought I’d try starting them in the greenhouse to get a headstart on these summer crops.  Frankly, I’m not wild about growing either of them in this particular garden since they take up so much space (I do like eating them though). But if I get them producing early enough, I’m hoping they’ll finish in plenty of time to pull out and make space for some of the fall crops I’m aiming to grow.  

It was nice to finally get some stuff on my bench in the greenhouse.  Since these few trays took up residence there, I’ve almost filled up the rest of the bench with plant material I scavenged from around the area, more trays of seeds (another post on those later), some herbs bought during a trip to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens last week, and transplants I got from the farm (it’s nice to have connections).  Now I’m just really antsy to see these seeds start germinating!  

And since it was rainy outside, I also took the opportunity to take a few artsy-fartsy photos of the stuff in the potting shed.  Not all were that great (awfully poor lighting in the rain in there), but I like these two.  Makes gardening look a little less messy, ya know?  

The other day something so utterly bizarre happened that I literally stopped in my tracks and stared, mouth agape. There, among a box of seeds sitting on a neighbors porch, was a packet of purslane seeds!   Any gardener worth his or her salt knows that purslane is a nasty invasive weed that can take over a garden plot in a week if left to its own devices.  Who the heck would sell its seeds?  And why the heck would anyone buy them?  Sadly, I know the answer to both those questions.  Purslane has recently become a highly favored gourmet addition to salads and such in upscale restaurants.  I’m guessing some marketing guru got the notion to sell its seeds, not knowing enough about its cultivation to realize it was a weed!  I could only shake my head in disbelief.

Eating weeds is not a new concept though.  In fact, I think it’s one that should be highly encouraged, with a little weed identification education of course.  Don’t go out and eat just any weed. Only some are edible.  But once you know what is edible – and some are quite delicious – go get ‘em! 

It certainly is a unique way to clean out the invasive species from your garden or local park.  One caveat though when foraging for edible weeds: be sure you know if they’ve been sprayed.  It’s best to get them out of your own garden or overgrown backyard if you can. And let’s face it, we all have a weed or two somewhere.  

I’ve been doing a lot of weed pulling in my new line of work/study and one that repeatedly rears its unusually pretty head is garlic mustard.  It’s a member of the Brassicaceae family (the one with broccoli and cabbage in it), and it gets the same small white flowers when it bolts into seed.  It spends its first year low to the ground though as a mounded rosette of deep green kidney-shaped leaves.  It’s a little harder to identify if you don’t know what you’re looking for, but I think these younger clumps make for better eating. 

While pulling a few hundred garlic mustard plants, I meditated on the name and decided it surely must be edible with a name that included two delicious flavor agents.  After a little research, I learned it was once a very regular part of the colonial diet as an herb and salad green, particularly in winter when not much other green leafy stuff was available (garlic mustard pops its head up before anything else in the Northeast which is one of the reasons why it’s such a “successful” weed).  Since it’s a prolific seeder, at some point it no doubt got out in the woods where it grew like crazy in the shade and has ever since been the scourge of all those horticulturalist intent upon preserving native undergrowth in our woodlands. 

I’m always intrigued by older food traditions and the idea of putting a weed to good use, much like my beloved sorrel (weed-turned-delicacy), set my cook senses tingling.  Since I was thinking of sorrel as a good cultural comparison and maybe even somewhat similar in flavor, I decided to revisit the recipe I created for sorrel almond pesto to see if I could make a spring version of that more summery dish.  I still have some frozen basil on hand and instead of fresh tomatoes accompanying the pesto, I put the last of my oven-dried tomatoes to use.  Presto, some fresh *spring* pesto!   And a few less weeds in my yard to boot!

This pesto really is quite tasty with an emphasis on garlic and a hint of mustard heat.  I think it’d be great toss with some hot pasta and sautéed asparagus too.  Both the leaves and the roots of garlic mustard are edible so I threw in both for good measure, but I’m not sure if one is better than the other.  I think I might try the leaves as an addition to my next salad too.  If we all pitch in and do the same, this “weed” might actually get back to its rightful place – the table – and get out of our woods. 

Garlic Mustard Pesto
A Straight from the Farm Original

1 C. tightly packed garlic mustard leaves, stems removed
1 T. chopped garlic mustard root
1 large clove of garlic, roughly chopped
2 T. frozen basil (thawed) OR  ½ C. fresh, chopped
¼ C. slivered almonds
Pinch of salt
¼ C. extra virgin olive oil

Carefully wash the garlic mustard leaves and roots.  Roughly chop the leaves and roots and place in a food processor or blender.  Add the garlic, basil, almonds and salt.  Give these ingredients a whirl, pulsing and scrapping down the sides, until it becomes a gritty paste.  Add the olive oil and process until it forms a creamy spread.

Pesto can be stored up to a week in an air-tight container in the fridge or stored frozen for several months. 

(makes ½ cup)

Garlic Mustard Pesto and Oven Dried Tomato Bites
Adapted from this recipe

¼ c. garlic mustard pesto
¼ c. oven dried tomatoes*
1 c. shredded mozzarella
Loaf of sourdough French bread, sliced 1 inch thick

*If using the oven dried tomatoes, reconstitute them by placing in hot water for five minutes.  Drain and dab with a towel before tossing in two tablespoons of olive oil and letting sit until pliable and soft.  Roughly chop prior to using.   If you don’t have the oven dried tomatoes, just use sun dried tomatoes packed in oil, draining off the oil and chopping. 

Spread slices of bread with a generous layer of pesto.  Top with chopped tomatoes and mozzarella.  Place under a hot broiler for 2 to 3 minutes until cheese is melted and golden brown.  Serve immediately. 

(serves 8-10 as appetizers)

Two weeks of having my new garden, and I finally feel like I’m making some progress with it.   Digging the pathways and raised beds was quite the laborious task and took a lot more time than I anticipated.  But I wanted to do the framework right, putting in deep paths with a deep layer of mulch so weeds and mud will be staved off most of the time. 

Grunt work done, it was time to get planting.  It’s already quite late in the seaons to be planting some of the cool weather spring crops.  But since I already had the seeds, I figured it was worth putting a few in just to see what would happen.   On April 24th, I sowed seeds for Easter Egg Radishes (Raphanus sativus), Sugar Snap Peas (Pisum sativum), and an “antique” lettuce cutting mix (Lactuca sativa).  For the radishes, I put in a 3′ x 5′ section of one of my raised bed.  For the peas and lettuce, I sowed them together in the same section of another raised bed, hoping the peas growing up the trellis will eventually provide enough shade to keep the lettuce happy a little longer in this unseasonably warm spring.  If nothing else, I can hang a tent of filmy cloth from the trellis too.  Granted, this little scheme of mine depends in part on the peas taking off themselves, a challenge on dry near-80 degree days like we’ve been having this April.   Fingers crossed! 

    
                Radish Seeds                                Sugar Snap Pea Sees

In any case, I sowed 20 peas and broadcast a 2′ x 6′ section of the lettuce seeds.   I wish I had talked to Harold, one of my teachers, a little sooner about some of his helpful tricks for planting in clay-rich soil like what’s in my garden.  Next time I direct sow small seeds like lettuce and radish, I’ll follow his advice and cover them with potting soil instead of the existing dirt that tends to form a hard crust that diminishes germination success. (Of course this is only practical advice for the home gardener with a small manageable plot.  Farmers would be hard pressed to do this.)   Live and learn, right?

Next up on the “direct sow” list are carrots, swiss chard, sorrel, and chicory.   I also need to get to work on starting seeds in trays for transplants of tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and cucumbers.  I already did this months ago for Weavers Way Farm so if feels like I’m way behind schedule.  It’ll be a late harvest all around this season, but that’s fine since I’m only growing this plot for myself (and for the blog/you).  I’m also looking around for some more unusual stuff: a hardy kiwi and maybe some ground cherries.   The complete crop list, or at least complete as it stands right now, is captured below. 

To keep myself organized, on my garden design sheet, I’ve broken out each of my four raised beds, which are three feet wide, into five foot sections.  I feel it will be a good starting amount of space for most of the crops I am growing to feed myself and D over the summer and to put back some preserves for winter.  Some crops will take up more than one 3′ x 5′ section, especially the ones I like…oh beloved swiss chard and tomatoes, I can’t wait to start harvesting you! 

Oh, another exciting tidbit to share that’s garden related: I’m getting a hive of bees to keep as part of my apprentice work!  I’ll definitely be posting a lot more information about that as I get started, but for now I’m dreaming of harvesting my own honey and maybe selling it with some of my homemade teas, either online or at the Headhouse Market.  How cool would that be?   I am also going to start investigating the best flowers for honeybees and make sure to plant plenty of them in my garden. 

So who has a garden plan or inspiration to share??  I can use more ideas so let me know what you’ve got! 

my garden as it looked at the end of my first day of digging in it

It took a week and several revisions, but I’ve finally come up with what I think is my final design for this year’s garden.  It consists of four long raised beds for the vegetable plot, each three feet wide.  Figuring out that part was easy.  The design of the herbaceous/ornamental plot was a whole different beast.  

I wasn’t exactly intimidated by it so much as I was uninspired.  I knew that I wanted to focus a good portion on growing flowers for cutting as that’s an area of interest for me moving forward in my horticulture career.   I also wanted enough room for a “tea garden”, a section that will allow me to experiment with new herbs in order to broaden my portfolio of homemade teas.   Here’s the starter list for that:  

Another general group of plants that interest me are seedums, something I know little about but am very intrigued by their shapes and textures.  I put them on the original design layout but really had no vision for their presentation.  Then the horticulture gods smiled upon me, and I was gifted with three baby Metasequoia trees.  They were just the jolt of inspiration I needed to get going with some ideas.  The major design element of my herbaceous area will be a constructed “bank” to showcase a sweep of succulents resting under the three trees that are now anchoring the bank at its highest point (more on how I engineered this bank to come).  Tucked in below the bank of succulents will be my tea garden, assuming all those herbs can play nice in such a small space.   

This garden incorporates graded assignments for my apprentice work at Longwood Gardens.  One of those assingments is to have a container planting in the garden that changes with the seasons.   Knowing what I wanted to do with this container was easy.  Knowing how to implement remains a challenge.  What I envision is water garden container for the summer, showcasing a pitcher plant or two, some bog grasses, and a large water lily.  I have zero experience in bog plants and water gardening.  But I am eager to start this piece, hopefully with the help of Kari, an expert at Longwood who knows a good bit about them.

I’m still sketching out ideas for the “facade” of my garden, toying with the notion of growing a hardy kiwi vine up poles on each corner and stringing solar powered twinkle lights entwined with willow branches between them.  Wouldn’t that be pretty?  Those plans will have to wait though.  At the moment, I need to get all of my seeds sown for my vegetable plot and go plant shopping for my ornamental plants. 

Anyone got some good ideas to share about garden design?  Either asthetic or functional?  I’d love to hear them!

What did you do to celebrate Earth Day? 
I planted a couple baby Metasequoia (redwood) trees. 
Fun!
(that’s not a metasequoia above; it’s a magnolia)

You might have noticed that I haven’t been very, um, active in the kitchen lately.  I’ve already explained that in part a few posts back.  But I didn’t realize just how much having dirt under my nails every day now would divert my attention.  I gotta scrub for a good fifteen minutes before anyone would be wanting me in the kitchen! 

But I’m not complaining.  Nope.  I’m lovin’ the ride so far.  I broke ground on my garden plot this week, something I’m absolutely dying to tell to you about, but I haven’t got the photos I want just yet to put up that post.  I keep changing my plot layout, and I want to get that solidified first.  I will tell you about what I’m planting first (tomorrow, in fact).  I’ve got an antique lettuce mix, sugar snap peas, “easter egg” radishes, and sorrel.  I’ll be direct seeding all of those considering the current hot streak here in the Northeast.  These cool weather crops are going to need to get started as fast as possible if they’re going to have a productive spring before the real heat wave hits. 

But this is a recipe post, not at garden post.  So, I did get in the kitchen on an evening this past week, one of the evenings I didn’t have a class, a meeting, or a lecture to attend (there seems to be one almost every night now), but I didn’t quite have the energy to start from square one.  What to do…what to do?  I spied the leftover roasted roots in the fridge, looking a little worse for the wear (certainly lacking any “crispy” factor), and got the notion to make a quick soup with them.  

I’m a sucker for lentils in soup.  And I’m an even bigger sucker for how pretty uncooked red lentils are (if only they stayed so pretty after boiling).  I know they’re rather unassuming, but I’m still drawn in by their perfect circular shape and the feel of them running through my fingers.  I thought I was a bit of an oddball until I saw Amelie, my favorite movie of all time, and the scene at the grocers where she takes pleasure in running her hands through sacks of legumes.  

Since red lentils cook so quickly, they seemed a good match for my roasted root soup idea.  So there were lentils and there were roasted roots, but quite frankly, the rest of it is a bit fuzzy.  I’ll do my best to recap in a recipe that will let you recreate this silky smokey soup.  The pureed red lentils make this soup thick and filling.  If you don’t have the exact same mix of roasted roots, you can still make the soup with only roasted potatoes. 

So here goes with the “recipe”… if anyone notices anything terribly amiss, feel free to point it out.

Roasted Root and Red Lentil Soup
A Straight from the Farm Original

1 c. red lentils (uncooked)
4 c. vegetable broth
1 bay leaf
2 c. roasted roots
1 c. frozen peas
1 t. finely minced fresh rosemary
1 c. light cream
salt and pepper

Sort out any bad ones and rinse the lentils in a change of water.  Bring the vegetable broth up to a boil in a large saucepan.  Add the lentils and the bay leaf.  Boil for a minute or two before reducing the heat to low and simmering for 20 minutes, or until tender. 

Add half of the roasted roots to the lentils, stirring to heat for a minute or so.  Remove saucepan from stove.  Using an immersion or stand blender, blend lentil mixture until smooth.  Add a generous pinch of salt and pepper and give the blender another whirl. 

Return lentil mixture to the saucepan/stove and add the rest of the roasted roots, the rosemary, and the peas.  Cook until everything is heated through, about 10 minutes.  Remove saucepan from heat and slowly add the cream, constantly stirring.  Taste and add salt and pepper as needed. 

(serves 6)