Sweet Apple Lentil Soup

Adam and I were making grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner (vegan of course), so it was important that I made a delicious soup to go with it. My logic flowed into a soup with apples (which always go great with grilled cheese), which moved to sweet potato, carried on by soup friendly lentils.

Ingredients (serves 4-6):
1 tsp oil
2 tbsp margarine, or vegan butter
1 sweet onion, chopped
1 apple, cored and grated 
2 sweet potatoes, chopped
2 carrots, chopped

       1 tsp minced, fresh ginger

       1 clove garlic, minced

      1 tsp cumin powder

      1 tsp curry powder

      1/2 tsp chili powder

  1/4 tsp cinnamon

  1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (optional)

  1/2 tsp sea salt

  pepper to taste

  7 cups vegetable broth

  2 tsp apple cider vinegar

3/4 cup lentils

1) Saute the onion in oil and margarine until translucent (3 minutes). Add all of the other vegetables and allow to soften slightly (about 3 minutes). Add seasonings, sauteing for an additional 1 minute. Add the remaining ingredients, stirring to combine. Allow soup to come to a boil, turn down the heat and simmer for about 20 minutes (or until the lentils are completely softened). You can leave the soup chunky, or puree. I usually like to puree half of the mixture, leaving the other half nice and chunky which gives me the best of both worlds :). Enjoy!