It Is My Turn To Post, Which Is Why It's Late

I was sick! Wretchedly sick with a cold although now that I'm better it's sort of hard to remember that I spent much of the week staggering around with a fever and complaining dramatically to my poor long-suffering husband. And I didn't have to make THAT many lunches this past week, because I cleverly infected my children as well and they mostly just lay around asking me to make chicken noodle soup (the "good" kind that comes dry in packets and that Gwyneth Paltrow would never, ever feed her children).

But I also made homemade lentil soup, which is one of my children's very favorite things and which causes ANOTHER one of my children to burst into horrified sobbing so you be the judge of whether or not your kids will like this. It packs nicely in thermoses for lunch, if your children are more like my first child and if they're more like my youngest it will also give them an excellent story of childhood hardship for when they're older and build their character:

M's Lentil Soup
1 quart chicken stock (although if you want this to be a vegetarian soup, add vegetable stock or heck, just another quart of water)
1 quart water
1 pound dried red lentils
2 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
2 medium onions, diced
3 garlic cloves minced
1 tsp dried oregano
a sprinkle of black pepper
1/2 cup olive oil
pinch of salt
and any or all of the following:
2 large tomatoes, de-glopped and quartered
a red pepper, diced
a green pepper, diced (and you can continue adding other colours of peppers, if you'd like. You're free!)
2 large carrots, peeled and diced

In a large pot, bring the chicken stock and water to a boil. Add all the other ingredients at once. Bring the soup to a boil, TURN IT DOWN and let it simmer along for... a while. Half an hour? Stir it once in a while and make sure it doesn't burn. It's done when it's cooked and it tastes better after a day or two in the fridge but it MAGICALLY the best tasting lentil soup ever.