Recipes from the farm: Lentil Soup

To go along with Rosie's cooking at work posts I wanted to start posting about the food we eat on a regular basis here on the homestead. The "Recipes from the farm" will be food that we and our helpers eat here on a normal day; nothing too fancy or off beat, just the normal meals we make from what we produce and serve at our table.

Tonight's post will be Lentil Soup, a "lazy  food" we just throw in a pot to feed a lot of people without much work.

1-3 lbs of pork (ham/belly/shank/bacon/stew meat, whatever you have)
3 carrots
1-2 onions
3+ cloves of garlic
8 or so cups of water
2 cups of lentils
 2-4 potatoes
some balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper
Olive oil or lard

Start by lightly brown the pork in the bottom of a cast iron pot (or other heavy bottomed pot) with some oil/lard. Once the meat it lightly browned, add the onion, garlic and carrot and cook over high heat for about 5 min. Pour in the water then add the lentils and potatoes (if you have some extra sausage from breakfast you can add that as well). Let it simmer for about 45 min then add salt and pepper to taste. Just before serving pour about 3 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar into the pot and stir. Then ladle into bowls and serve with some fresh bread (Holly frequently provides fresh bread for dinner on our "crafting" nights).  

This is the kind of soup that you can add whatever you have on hand to and it will probably work out pretty well. Also we will adjust the amounts of everything depending on what we have on hand, some times no potatoes on ready so we skip them or maybe substitute turnips, maybe add some celery or some bell pepper, really you can add or remove just about any anything.