Day Four: Lazy Sunday Minestrone

Sundays in our house tend to be a little lazy. With the weather getting very cold, we tend to snuggle in and watch some football and college basketball and crave comfort food.

During the week, breakfast is quick.  If it  takes me more than two minutes to make it, it is not happening. However, on the weekends, John likes to make a big breakfast. This morning he found some bacon in the freezer along with some frozen hash browns. We already had eggs including a bunch of leftover egg whites from John's New Year's Eve creme brulee, which only takes yolks.

Soon we had a great hash brown omelet.  OK, the bacon and hash browns probably offset the healthiness of the egg whites, but it was darn tasty.

We ate breakfast on the late side, so we decided to eat lunch late and have a kind of expanded snack for dinner.  For lunch we made Minestrone soup.  I'd made these soup-in-a-jar kits for Christmas.  I had one left over and we put it together.

There was only one problem. Canned tomatoes are not an item we stock up on.  We buy them as needed and we only had enough for John to make chili sometime in the next few weeks.  We did have an extra can of Rotela with green chilies.  Since John adds chilies to his chili anyway, he gave up a small can of diced tomatoes.  But this was not enough.  Luckily, we had three fresh tomatoes in the fridge.

John called on the skills his parents gave him to get the tomatoes peeled and prepped for the stew.  First he boiled water and dropped the tomatoes in.

Then he scooped them out and put them into an ice bath so the skin would bubble up and peel right off.

A quick coring and peeling.

We soon have enough tomatoes for the soup.

Next we prepped...well, John prepped the garlic, carrots and celery.  I like baby carrots in my lunch.  It gives the chip crunch without all the calories.  It is amazing how a similar sensation can satisfy that craving. So we used them rather that whole carrots.

The lentils and seasonings in the jar had been simmering for two hours.  We added the veggies and some Italian sausage. John had cooked a bunch of it to easily make sausage sandwiches or pizza toppings and it was great to add to the soup.

The we added the macaroni and let it simmer for another half hour.

It was a great late lunch.  Very hearty, and the perfect comfort food for a cold Sunday.  Then we had some chicken wings as a late snack.  Another good day.