Last night for supper I made Lentils, Monastery Style a favorite recipe from Diet for a Small Planet. These days I access the recipe on my iPad having long since lost the paperback copy of the cookbook that I first used, back when I was in my early 30s. If I still had the paperback it most likely would have gone the route of my other cookbooks from that era, the Vegetarian Epicure or the original Moosewood cookbook—spines broken, pages falling out, favorite pages so stained it’s getting hard to read them.
This is a simple dish—lentils, broth, onions, carrots, tomatoes, some seasoning, a surprising dash of sherry at the end and a sprinkling of shredded swiss cheese in the bottom of the serving bowls. I also add garlic because soup needs garlic and this time I added some turkey sausage.
Every time I make it I remember the first time I made it in the small kitchen of the Maynard Road apartment. It was a Sunday afternoon and friends were coming to make music—Pam with her fiddle, Beth with her dulcimer, Wil with guitar and mandolin, and me on guitar and dulcimer and penny whistle. We all sang, some of us managing to pick up harmonies, others holding tight to the melody. We’d pick and sing and then eat and pick and sing some more. We kept to this routine for a year or so and then got together less and less. I’m still friends with these people but we come together in different ways now.
But every time I eat this soup I’m back there, in that living room, snow on the ground outside, the sweet and savory goodness of the soup, its simple ingredients that blend to yield rich flavor, our voices and instruments blending as well.
At Home on Harlow 
I had to quickly go into the kitchen and check whether we still have the three cookbooks you mention. I could only find the first Moosewood one. Where have they gone?
Thanks for this, brought back good memories.
Thanks for stopping by Sabine. Yes, cookbooks are a treasure trove of memories. I did finally replace Moosewood with the most recent edition, however.
‘Diet for a Small Planet’ was one of the first cookbooks I ever bought, I think, as a student from a very homespun little wholefood shop in Cardiff in Wales. I don’t know what happened to it. My favourites were brown rice fried with nuts and raisins, and a very simple potato soup with a bay leaf in it!
Thanks for your comment over at mine, which I took as from another Lynn, so left you an irrelevant and probably baffling reply! But your blog is lovely, it’s nice to see blogging has by no means run its course for everyone. I shall be back.
Lucy, I’ve so enjoyed your blog and learning about your life in that corner of the world. I’m glad you stopped by here!