Larks Great Pumpkin and Red Lentil Soup

Preparation Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

4 cups vegetable stock, or water
1 kilo of pumpkin, peeled and chopped
1 can chic peas
1 can cherry tomatoes
1 cup red lentils
1 tablespoon minced onion flakes
1 tsp salt free seasoning
1 leek
2 ribs of celery

Instructions:
Put all ingredients in pressure cooker and cook for 10 minutes on high pressure. Turn off heat source and allow to cool naturally.

For slow cookers add all ingredients except for beans. Use the medium setting and leave cook for around 6-8 hours. Add drained beans and cook another 10 minutes or so.

Optional, add a cup of chopped greens before taking off heat. If using the pressure cooker, just stir them through and leave for a couple of minutes.

The basis for this recipe was posted by Lark on the ETL Forum. I have played around with it and I like this version very much.

I made it to take out with me tonight. I just stirred the soup and left it chunky. I liked it that way, but you could either mash it with a potato masher, or blend some and add the blended portion back into the soup to make it thicker.

Well, it's almost Larks original recipe with a few things added and a couple deleted along the way. Make it your own and add or subtract ingredients to your hearts content.

The Green Bean Machine

The Eat To Live member centre has a lot of good recipes. The basis of this was the Green Machine features in the Healthy Times Newsletter, October 2002. However I did not have any of the greens listed, instead I used equal parts of tatsoi, broccoli and added 1 sliced onion, 1 cup of sliced mushrooms, 3 cloves of garlic, 1 cup of beans and at the last minute I added a handful of baby roma tomatoes. These add a wonderful touch of colour to the finished dish. To add flavour I used a mild chilli tomato sauce to cook the vegetable in. This whole dish takes just minutes to cook and makes a very healthy meal.