I wish I could sexy up this post somehow for you; come up with a charming story about this soup and its origins.

Is there charm in wanting healthy food after a weekend full of pumpkin pie, whipped cream, mashed potatoes, turkey and bottomless glasses of red wine?  Not particularly.  It just is.

As a chill has entered the air (so salad just wouldn’t cut it), I took to making myself what amounts to a diet soup.  Like a diet salad, it’s full of high-volume, low-calorie ingredients that are chock full of vitamins, flavonoids, antioxidants and heart-healthy fibre.  See?  Not sexy.  Delicious, however, and the perfect thing to eat as you’re coming down off your tryptophan high.  And the perfect thing to eat before indulging in another piece of leftover pie.  Okay.  That might be the sexy bit.

Dining companion:  Boardwalk Empire

Tomato, red pepper and barley soup

• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 4 shallots, finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 teaspoons crushed red pepper
• 2 carrots, halved then chopped
• 2 red peppers, diced
• 28 oz can of plum tomatoes
• 2 cups of chicken stock
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 0.25 cup hulled barley
• salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil in large saucepan over medium heat.  Add shallots, peppers and carrots and sweat down for about 5 minutes.  Add garlic, oregano and crushed pepper and saute until fragrant.  Add tomatoes (with juice) and break up with the back of a wooden spoon.  Add some salt and pepper to taste here.

Add stock and bring to a boil.  Add barley, reduce heat to a simmer and cook soup half-covered for about an hour — until barley is cooked, may only take 45 minutes.  Check seasoning and adjust to taste.

There are times in life when loving Me is important.  And as attractive as that easy lever can be, I know that putting a little elbow grease in for tonight’s dinner might just make life a little rosier.

I can easily go overboard on my lust for carbohydrates, so I’ll just say that my white bread needed to be on the menu.  Pasta could be an obvious accompaniment, but that screams  emotional eating.  Especially when I had decided that I would make rice pudding for dessert.

Soup, then.

I wanted something healthy and hearty.  Not a cream soup.  And not a puree.  I just wanted to dump everything into a pot and wait.  This barley, lentil and chard soup from Bon Appétit did the trick.  I halved the recipe, but kept the same amount of tomatoes and topped up the red chard I was using. 

It was delicious.  The fresh dill was a nice change from a more expected herb like basil.  The lentils added a hidden body, and the barley gave the substance I was after.  You feel no guilt about a meal when it has something like red chard in it.  The soup nicely coated my bread when dipped—coat rather than soak is to me the mark of good bread and appropriate soup thickness.  The crusts served their purpose of pre-cleaning the bowl before dishwashing later.

I ended with what I can only call a Quick ‘n’ Dirty Rice Pudding.  Not much thought, only the effort of stirring, and hardly perfect.  But it was what I wanted:  sweet and creamy and chewy and vanilla-y.  And after being completely cooled in the fridge, it also had the sticky, glutinous texture I (maybe not you) love in rice pudding.

I sat at my table alone eating dinner, listening to Carlos Gardel, and reading a magazine.  I lit a candle and enjoyed the sunshine of the longer Alberta days.

I felt the warmth of the soup in my body and the love that was made just for me.

Quick ‘n’ Dirty Rice Pudding

Makes two generous servings.

0.5 cup Arborio rice

2 cups milk

3 tablespoons sugar

Pinch of salt

Seeds of one vanilla bean

1 egg yolk, lightly beaten

1 teaspoon butter

Bring rice, milk, salt, sugar, vanilla seeds, and now-empty vanilla bean to a boil.

Reduce heat to low and cover, stirring often, until rice is tender and pudding is to desired thickness—more milk may need to be added.

Take pudding off the heat.  Remove the bean pod.  Continually stir the pudding as you slowly add the egg yolk, which further thickens the pudding.  Stir in butter.

Enjoy warm or cool completely in the fridge (with plastic wrap pressed onto pudding for skin prevention).

I finish with a little cream as I like my pudding extra thick.