SCD Lentil, Tomato, and Chicken Soup

Soup! Gotta love it. Alex wanted me to use the lentils he bought for dinner, and I wanted to start basic. I didn't look up a recipe or anything, figuring that it'd be a simple little journey to make a tomatoey, lentil soup. And it was! Super easy. Alex wanted chicken in the soup, as he's always trying to get more calories in (he really can't keep weight on even though he eats 3000+ calories per day), but it would be easy to make it vegetarian or vegan by leaving the chicken out. And we all know lentils are a great source of protein and fiber!

This makes a lot of soup (two big tupperwares full), so feel free to half this recipe, or you could even quarter it if you wanted to make this into one single meal.

Ingredients:
1 package boneless, skinless chicken breasts (probably about 1.25-1.75lbs)
10oz dried lentils, by weight, which is a little more than half of a 16oz package
4 cups SCD broth (We use Trader Joe's Hearty Vegetable broth, which is SCD legal according to the ingredients. A lot of organic vegetable broths are SCD legal, but you can always make your own, too.)
2 tbsp butter or olive oil
10 medium tomatoes, blanched and diced
3 stalks of celery, diced
1 carrot, diced
1 large onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 tsp rosemary
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

Directions
1. Soak the lentils for at least 12 hours. I soaked mine for over 24 hours because that's how my schedule wound up and I think, apart from expanding them, it also reduced the cooking time. Drain the lentils, set aside.
2. Add butter to the bottom of your big soup pot and turn the heat on medium low to medium. Once the butter is foamy, add the diced onion, carrot, and celery.

3.Cook until tender, then add the garlic, chicken, salt, and pepper. Stir occasionally until the chicken is cooked through.
4. Meanwhile, we're going to blanch some tomatoes to get the skins off. Boil water in a pot large enough to submerge a tomato. Grab a big bowl and fill it with ice water. Submerge each tomato in the pot of boiling water for about 30 seconds, or until the skin cracks. Then, take it out and shock it by putting it in the ice bath. Do this with all 10 tomatoes and, after, peel the skins and dice them up.

5. Once the chicken is cooked through, add the vegetable broth, the lentils, the (large quantity of) diced tomatoes, and the remaining spices. Stir until it's all mixed together.

Not done!

6. Lower the heat to a simmer and cover, leaving a little crack for steam to escape. Simmer for at least an hour, stirring occasionally. The soup is done when the lentils are soft, but remember that soup gets better the longer it simmers.

Done!