Soup with the Simons: Red lentil barley (Plus: The best Nov. 1 ever)

By Tali Simon | November 2, 2011

Yesterday was a perfectly ordinary day. My husband woke up early and left for work shortly after 7:00 a.m. I woke up an hour later and went to work at my morning job, stopped at the makolet on my way home, and then clocked some more work hours during the afternoon.

In the evening, he did a lot of laundry, I washed some dishes, and we dove into a delicious pot of red lentil barley soup. Later, he prepared lessons for the next day and scanned the day’s headlines while I Gchat-ed with my siblings in America and browsed my favorite cooking blogs.

And it was only then, when a blogger made reference to it being the day after Halloween, that I realized with a little jolt of joy that Oct. 31 had come and gone without my even thinking about ghosts and goblins.

As a feeling of pure goodness surged through my veins, I remembered October 2005. I had returned from a glorious year in seminary just a few months earlier and still felt keenly the separation from Eretz Yisrael. Although I knew with everything in me that I’d return, I missed Israel terribly and hated any reminder that I wasn’t home yet.

When I stepped into CVS one day in late October and saw the black and orange decorations everywhere, I nearly burst into tears. Black and orange?! I just wanted my blue and white.

Today, six years later, I think I’ve just fulfilled another dream. A dream in which I am so far away from day-to-day American culture that I don’t even realize that it’s Halloween.

There were no candy sales. There were no special ads in the newspaper. There were no trick-or-treaters.

There was just my husband and I, at home at the end of the day, enjoying our bowls of soup in our cozy caravan near the Dead Sea.

And life felt indescribably good.

Red lentil barley soup
Tweaked from Norene’s Healthy Kitchen

Ingredients

2 large onions, chopped
5 small/medium carrots, chopped
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
1½ cups dried red lentils, rinsed and drained
1 cup pearl barley, rinsed and drained
10 cups water
2 Tbsp soup mix
2 bay leaves
1½ tsp salt
freshly ground black pepper, to taste
¼ cup minced fresh dill (or 2 Tbsp dried)
¼ cup minced fresh parsley (or 2 Tbsp dried)

Directions

1. Combine all ingredients except fresh herbs in a large soup pot and bring to a boil. (If using dried herbs, put them in now, too.) Reduce heat to low and simmer for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

2. If using fresh herbs, stir them in at this point and simmer an additional 5-10 minutes. Discard the bay leaves and adjust seasonings to taste. Serve hot. (I’d eat it cold, too, but that might just be me.)