This black bean and lentil soup is a spicy southwestern soup recipe thrown together with what I had on hand in the house one night… Delish!

During these cold months of winter, nothing goes better for dinner than a warm, hearty soup recipe. This one fits the bill there…

“OK… black beans, tomatoes and ground turkey on hand… what to make? How about my signature quick chili? Great! Oops… I’m missing all the rest of the ingredients… rethink that plan…”

This is the conversation I had with myself one evening recently, when I drifted into the kitchen after a long day at the computer to make dinner. I love my chili, but I had to come up with a different thrown together soup recipe when I realized I didn’t have all the ingredients on hand to make the traditional chili.

A few veggies, some spices and a canister of lentils later, I had a flavorful pot of soup going. You’ll find the full recipe and detailed cooking instructions on my main recipe site, Thrown Together Meals…

Black Bean and Lentil Soup

I hope you enjoy!

I love chili! I grew up on it, but my mom made it the old-fashioned way, with dried beans that had to be soaked overnight, fatty ground beef and large chunks of tomatoes. Much as I loved it (and made it that way myself for years), once I became a single, working mom, I had to come up with an alternative if I wanted to keep eating chili.

So, I developed this easy vegetarian chili recipe. I went vegetarian because my girls became finicky about eating beef during their teen years and neither white chili nor ground turkey were too mainstream in the early 90s… at least not that I was aware of. So I developed this recipe that has lots of protein, but it comes from TVP and beans, rather than from beef.

These days, I often make this recipe using ground turkey because I cook now for my hubby and mother, both of whom like meat, but if you want to stick with the vegetarian version, you certainly can.

You’ll find my Easy Vegetarian Chili recipe here on my Thrown-Together-Meals.com website, along with some suggested variations. It’s certainly not the only vegetarian chili recipe out there, but it is uniquely mine and it’s fast and easy, not to mention healthy! Hope you enjoy…

Threw together a new dinner meal the other night. Had some frozen chicken breasts, was in the mood for rice and as I stood in my kitchen, thinking “What to make? What to make?”, I felt an inspiration for “Island Chicken”.

What’s that, you ask? Well, to me, it was fresh, tropical flavors. All of my meals include lots of veggies, because I’m very into healthy eating. And I had gotten a great deal on red, yellow and orange bell peppers at the store last weekend. So this seemed a great way to use them!

You can see the recipe on my Thrown-Together-Meals.com website. My family (and I) loved this meal!