Blogmas || Day 22 || Recipe- Lentil Soup

Hellooo shimmers,
The other day my mom had a few bits and pieces in her fridge and asked if I could come up with something (using the minimal ingredients) for tea... how I do love a challenge...so I made some lentil soup, so I thought I would share how I made it. Soups are great for the cold winters keep you warm inside, they are also super healthy and not that difficult to make.
Ingredients:-
2 onions
2 carrots
2 Celery sticks
2 cloves of garlic
2 chicken or vegetable stock cubes
10 cherry tomatoes
300g lentils
1 chilly/ pinch or two of crushed dry chillies (optional, gives it a bit of a kick)
My ingredients. I find it easiest if I lay out all my ingredients before I start and then I know I have everything I need and its just easier.
Chop up the vegetables and dissolve stock cubes in 1.8 litres of water. These little dishes sre preparation dishes by a company called Pampered Chef, my gran somehow acquired them; probably in a raffle they always win the raffle...everytime! But she wasnt using them so gave them to me. They are super handy but any sort of bowl is good!
Ready to be put in pot. The onions are diced, garlic chopped, celery chopped, tomatoes cut in half and carrots chopped. The size doesn't really matter as I am going to blend it at the end, but the smaller the vegetables are chopped the quicker they will cook!
To a large pot I put a tablespoon of olive oil and then added the carrots, celery, garlic, onions and stirred it for 10 mins until onions were golden and carrots had softened.
Then into the pot goes the stock cubes dissolved in 1.8 litres of water, the chilli, tomatoes and lentils
Bring to the boil, and then reduce the heat and leave to simmer for about 20 mins.
It is ready when all the vegetables are softened and the lentils have absorbed liquid and become soft and fat and gone from red to yellow (Very technical word speak but that's how I make sure!)
Once it is ready I then blend it with a hand processor, you can put it in a food processor just ours is a bit temper mental and the hand device is easier to use in my opinion but both do the same job. 
Keep blending until all the soup has become liquid then season with salt and pepper.And Voilà Lentil soup! 
Hope you enjoyed this little quick recipe. Also I some times add thumb size piece of ginger chopped in with the veg at the start and sometimes I add spinach at the point where I add in the lentils and water and other ingredients. If you do add spinach when you blend the soup it will go green, so don't be alarmed!!Once the soup has cooled if you put it in an air tight container it will last in the fridge for a day or two and you can just heat it up, or alternatively in the freezer for a couple of months.The next recipe I am going to try is a yule log, by the time you read this I will have already attempted it, and if it is edible then it may be up on the blog tomorrow!I hope you are enjoying blogmas and looking forward to christmas. (3 sleeps to go!!)Laura x