Lentil Soup with Hot Dogs

People are abusing the word "occupy" these days, posting ridiculous pictures on facebook with captions that say things like, "Occupy the Gingerbread Man," or "Occupy My Empty Coffee Mug."  Those people should stop doing that.  Moving on now: lentil soup.  My grandmother put chopped up hot dogs in hers.  My mother did the same.  Hot dogs and a splash of vinegar.  When I learned how to make lentil soup I was a pretentious, budding chef, a purist of sorts, a food snob, and I was also responsible for feeding a small household of vegetarians, so it was goodbye hot dogs, hello straight-up lentil soup sans dogs.  Well, times have changed since then, in my life and in our national life, and hot dogs have returned to my soup pot.  I love the way they bloat when you cook them.  I also love the way they augment the color scheme. 

This is an interesting photograph to me because not every photograph shows you what cooked lentils look like in shadow and in full sun.  Sometimes half the pleasure of eating really is in the eye.  There is mystery in a good, chunky soup.  Look at the way that one little lentil clings to that central piece of wiener!  And those potatoes!  Do you not absolutely love the way their rounded corners emerge from below the murky surface of the soup?  And what about those bias-cut hot dogs?  There may still be a thin slice of pretension in me after all.  It's absolutely unnecessary to cut your dogs on the bias, unnecessary but also no more difficult than cutting them straight.  It's one of those win-win situations: you get a more visually stunning chunk of hot dog without any extra effort.  I would never julienne a hot dog—well, actually, I think that would be hilarious, and if the appropriate situation ever presents itself, I just may do that.  It would be a scream to quarter a hot dog lengthwise.

    
 As always, if you want to know how to make this lentil soup, you should email me.  Or you can leave a comment with your email, requesting the recipe.  Cheers.  Happy souping.