* Sweet Potato and Chana Dahl Soup {Meatless Mondays}

I know... you've all been waiting with bated breath for yet another chunky soup recipe. Haven't you.

I'm going to take your deathly silence as assent and plod on with the post.

This Sweet Potato and Chana Dahl Soup Recipe is a copycat of a Baxter's Soup by a similar name - except mine is a damn sight cheaper and has less calories... which wasn't the ultimate point but you can't have too much *happy* when it comes to food.

The point was... actually I don't know what the point was. I forget.

Anyway.... I've ended up with an exceptionally scrumptious and healthy soup that'll serve as a dinner if you're not craving steak and chips (fries), and works perfectly as a filling and healthy meal if you're doing the 5:2 diet... which I am. Sometimes successfully... other times... notsomuch. It seems to depend on how much cake there is in the house at any one time. 

If there isn't cake, it's really not a good idea to make cake, especially on a day when you are meant to be fasting because all sorts of things can (and do) happen... like finding yourself licking the butter cream off of the whisks or suddenly discovering your tongue in the bottom of the mixing bowl. Neither are good situations to suddenly come to your senses in. 

It's also very difficult to work out the exact amount of calories in 20 licks of coffee butter cream and 5 tongues of coffee cake batter.

Though I promise I did try.

Not.

* Slow Cooker Spicy Sausages with Red Lentil Mash

I am very slowly falling in love with my slow cooker. 

It's taken it's sweet time, but is finally producing edible, tasty food that doesn't resemble something out of a Cow & Gate jar that you'd serve to a baby... or attempt to.

I hadn't really thought about the fact that I'd be able to use it on hot days, when I don't want to run the oven and fill the house with even more heat. I'm afraid I was thinking *inside the box* and honestly figured I'd have put it into the back of a cupboard somewhere by now (after experimenting), until the cold Autumn weather returned.

Not so.

It's absolutely perfect in the warm weather we've been experiencing the past week or so because I can finally get out into my garden and do all the jobs that are on a list somewhere that I have been ignoring with a vengeance... and whilst I'm beavering away pressure washing patio slabs and painting garden fences outside... the slow cooker is puttering gently away inside, cooking our dinner (I helped, of course).

This particular recipe is adapted from a book I bought a few weeks back - The Slow Cook Book by Heather Whinney... and so far so good. It's chock full of recipes that I want to try, so be warned - you may be inundated... especially as the weather is so bloody GAWJUS right now.

This doesn't even feel like real life at the moment. That glowing yellow ball in the sky is something that us Brits have not seen much of in the last two years and the entire country is going D.I.Y. crazy, including me! I've even given the BBQ a spray paint because it hasn't been used in two years and was looking slightly gnarly underneath it's cover.

I also managed to spray paint my ankles.

Black.

It'll be all the rage, next season... trust me.

* Golden Lentil and Chorizo Soup

When I got home from work this morning - Neil had dug up half the back garden. He's decided that where we had hard landscaping, he now wants turf. I was at a complete loss as to what to say other than - "My you have worked hard, this morning!"... and "Fancy soup for lunch?"

I didn't have any soup. Which took me aback. I always have soup. It's fast food. I like fast food. I like soup.

I made soup.

Neil was my only audience for my Golden Lentil soup. I scattered it with chorizo and pumpkin seeds with a "voila!"...

Apparently, the pumpkin seeds weren't a necessary addition, but the chorizo was... and I quote.... "okay."

He's talking out of his arse.

It was scrumptious.