Tomato, lentil and lime soup - yummy!!

For lunch today we had tomato, lentil and lime soup.  The recipe is from the April 2012 issue of Olive magazine.  I found the recipe on the Good Food website by searching for lime soup.  There were a few lime left in my fruit bowl (they are starting to look a bit sad so I wanted to use them up) so I decided to see if there was a recipe that would allow me to use one of them for lunch.

One thing that I liked about this recipe (other than the fact that the soup was delicious) is that it uses both the zest and the juice of the lime, so there is no waste.  The recipe is easy to follow and quick to make.  I had a little bit more soup than what was needed to serve two people, so I have a portion left over for lunch tomorrow (there may well be a fight over who gets to take it to work!) as well as being able to feed two adults and a child lunch. 

I didn't give it to my son as I used a stock cube to make the vegetable stock.  To make the soup suitable for giving to a baby you need either make your own vegetable stock from scratch, omitting salt or use a low salt variety of stock cube (for example, Boots sell low salt stock cubes suitable for weaning in the baby food section of their shops).

Alterations
I made a few small alterations to the recipe.  I couldn't find my cumin seeds so I decided to use a little ground cumin instead of spending ages looking for the seeds.  I didn't have a large carrot, but had four small ones which I used instead.  Also, while the soup was simmering, the volume of the liquid decreased quite a bit, so I added some boiled water from the kettle to the pot. 

Cost
The onion for the soup cost 20 cent, the carrots were about 30 cent, the can of chopped tomatoes were 45 cent (from Lidl), the lime was 25 cent and I have allowed another 50 cent for the stock cube, ground cumin and puy lentils.  That makes the total cost of the soup €1.70 for three adult portions and a child's portion.  I think this would easily feed a family of four if the children are quite young.  If they are a bit older you might want to double to ingredients and have any leftovers you might have for lunch the next day.

If I had successfully grown my own carrots and onions this year (as I did last year) then the cost of the soup would have been €1.20 which is extremely cheap for lunch for the family.