Lentil Curry Soup

This has been the week of delicious soups! Perfect for our 7th snow fall this month. Ugh. Record snow fall really isn't all that exciting. Just saying...

anywho. shortly after new years, I came into the office and there was a green present sitting on my desk. My aweso

me boss (who i've

reference before, and is genuinely one of the coolest people i know) got me what has to be one of the the

most fantastic presents ever.

The Political Palate: A Feminist Vegetarian Cookbook.

It's this cookbook from the 70s put out by a group called the

Bloodroot collective, which runs a restaurant in Bridgeport CT. The book's out of print, but they have a whole series.

There are some awesome awesome things about this book.

1) It's broken up seasonally! (this recipe comes from the early winter section - Dec 22nd, to Feb 2)

2) It promotes eating locally (like 30 years before the locavore movement even came about. suckas)

3) this is probably the coolest part: on each page next to the recipe are feminist writings - a sort of "feminist bibliography" as they call it: Mary Daly, Audre Lorde, Judy Chicago, a bunch of names that I wish I recognized and am a bit embarrassed that I don't)

My boss heard about it on the radio and thought that I would like it, and then went on amazon to see if it was still available and read reviews on it. Most of them said that the like the reciepes but didn't want to have to read all that "feminist, lesbian, theory" and in my bosses words she thought "oh, that'd be perfect for Miriam." haha. she knows me so well.

anyway - here's the first recipe (with a few changes)! It's delicious!

1 cup lentils - soaked overnight (or, you know, soaked before you leave for work in the morning), and then cook in 3 cups water until done. (depending on your lentils 30 min-1 hour). Set aside

In a large soup pot:

Chop 2 onions (i used red, they called for 4, but that seemed a bit much...) - fry in olive oil.

Add 3 cloves garlic minced, 2 peppers (green or red, depending on your preference) chopped roughly

Add spices (or if you want to be fancy, cook

in the oil first): ok. so here's the deal on the spices. I added what they said, and it tasted rather bland. so then i just started throwing stuff in, which roughly doubled it. so i'll tell you what they said, and then but in whatever you want.:

1/2 t ginger

1 t ground tumeric

1 t ground coriander

1/4 t ground cloves

1 t chili powder

1 t ground cumin (or fry up some cumin seeds and use a mortar and pestle if you're super-duper fancy)

1 tsp salt (apparently my love of salt is well documented, so we all know that i probably put at least a tablespoon in)

(we also added some cayenne pepper and "curry" powder from the bodega in brooklyn - which is suspect in it's ethnic background.)

When the onion/pepper are done, add the cooked lentils to the pot (adding water as needed - soup should be kind of thin).

Boil together with 1 quart canned toma

toes (we used our winter CSA tomatoes! yay!), and 1/4 cup - 1 cup raisins (depending on how much you like raisins)

They also said to add the juice of 1 lemon, but we didn't and, frankly, i'm not sure how much it would add.

Garnish with yogurt, cashews, etc! (they suggest a slice of apple) ENJOY!

For your reading pleasure, and feminist edification, here's the quote on the page of this recipe:

"The nineteenth century produced many other vegetarian feminists - Margaret Fuller, Louisa May Alcott, Victoria Woodhull, Mary Shelly, and the Grimke sisters. The Vegetarian society held huge feasts during the 1850's, with honored feminist guests such as Lucy Stone, Amelia Bloomer, and Susan B. Anthony."

"The Oedible Complex: Feminism and Vegetarianism"

The Lesbian Reader

Carol Adams; Ed: Gina Covina and Laurel Galana; Amazon Press

(Can I just say how jealous I am that I can sit in on those dinners?!)