Lentil Soup OR Shelf Stable Cooking OR Eating with My Peculiarities

I am infamous in certain circles for my unreasonable dislike of the grocery store. I am stressed by crowds and fluorescent lights, and find making decisions about money and decisions about food stressful. Ergo, the grocery store - where you pay money for food, with lots of people and too bright lights and lousy music on the PA system - is a place I go as infrequently as possible.

One side effect of this (admittedly dysfunctional) habit is that I am very, very good at making meals from shelf-stable goods. Tonight's new dish was lentil soup:

Cupboard Lentil Soup
Saute one diced onion in olive oil.
Add 1 teaspoon dried oregano, 1 teaspoon dried basil, and a bay leaf.
Pour 1 can diced tomatoes and 8 cups of water.
Stir in 2 cups dried lentils.
Cover the pan and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the lentils are soft (~75 minutes for me, today).
Fish the bay leaf out, add salt and pepper to taste, and serve.

It was excellent.

If you have carrots, celery, sweet potatoes, etc. dice up a cup or two of them and throw them in with the onion. I was thrilled to have a sweet potato to chop in today, but discovered it was infiltrated with thready white mold, although the outside was perfect. That reminds me: smell or taste every single ingredient - including the oil and the spices - before you add it to a recipe. One rancid or 'turned' ingredient can ruin the whole thing.

And, to share a Very Important Tip I learned from The Bakerina: if you forget to stir your project and something burns to the bottom of the pan, DO NOT scrape it up, into the rest of the batch. Instead, pour off the non-burned portion. As long as you haven't scraped the blacked, charcoaly parts into the rest of the soup, it's salvageable. This wise tip saved a whole bucket of Jambalaya at a Mardi Gras party, a few years ago, and will serve you well.