Lentil Soup -Old Favorite with a New Twist

Let me start by saying...I love cookbooks. I love flipping through them in book stores, at friends and family...in fact I just borrowed New Vegetarian: Bold and Beautiful Recipes for Every Occasion from my daughter, but more about that some other time. And currently there are eight evaluation copies of great cookbooks from various publishers and author/agents for me to review, sitting on my table.

One of them is even called "Soup" and even though there are tons of great recipes in the book, I was in a very particular mood. I wanted to use the short ribs and marrow bone I had on hand to go with a lentil base. And the funny thing is, I ended up making my own old favorite - Mellow Lentil Soup, adding, not only a marrow bone for extra richness, but a grated sweet potato to thicken and sweeten it up a bit.

It was the grated sweet potato that was really calling me, and I was worried that it would overwhelm the earthiness of the lentils. It didn't and I got to add all that nutritional value without anyone being the wiser.

Did you know that nutritionists at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), ranked the sweet potato number one in nutrition of all vegetables? With a score of 184, the sweet potato outscored the next highest vegetable by more than 100 points. (Info found at FoodReference - almost twice the recommended daily allowance of vitamin A, 42 percent of the recommendation for vitamin C, four times the RDA for beta carotene, and, when eaten with the skin, sweet potatoes have more fiber than oatmeal. All these benefits with only about 130 to 160 calories).

Just curious....what healthful ingredients do you "hide" from your family?