Squash and lentil soup, aka how to survive February

The best way to survive a Minnesota winter is to escape from it, at least briefly. But if that's not feasible, here are five coping mechanisms:

1. Book a week at your favorite cabin for the peak of sweltering summer, when cool lake breezes will seem like a good thing. Cabin 1, here we come.

2. Get together with good friends for great food and entertainment (indulgent double chocolate bread pudding, a well-worn DVD --plus cats!). The warm feeling lasted long enough to get us home in the stupid cold to a kitchen free of dirty dishes . Bless you, Sonja and Bernie! (You know you're in Minnesota when your friends say, well, it was your turn, and they mean not the effort of cleaning and cooking but bundling up in the cold weather.)

3. Create a cave of cuddly throws and pillows, put on the teapot and then the fingerless gloves and curl up by the light of the Kindle or Netflix. It's a safer binge than the vodka that gets Russians through this same seasonal stupidity.

4. Valentine's isn't the only excuse for fresh flowers, but it's handy that the holiday hits when they're most needed for a pick-me-up.

5. Haul out the soup pot and make the thickest, heartiest soup you can come up with, the kind that almost has structural integrity, like this one.

Squash and lentil soup

Adapted from “Great Good Food” by Julee Rosso. It’s subtitled “Luscious Lower-Fat Cooking,” but for pity sake, this recipe has a bacon garnish. It stipulates lean bacon, but bacon only gets so low fat.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon butter

½ cup finely chopped onion

½ cup finely chopped carrot

½ cup finely chopped celery

5½ cups broth, divided

2 cups lentils

1 large butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cut into 1-inch chunks

½ teaspoon dried thyme

2 slices bacon, cooked crisp, drained and crumbled

Method

Heat butter over medium heat in large saucepan or Dutch oven. Add onion, carrot and celery and saute until softened but not browned. Add lentils and 4 cups of broth. Bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat and simmer for an hour. Check in toward the end to make sure mixture isn’t going dry, adding more broth if necessary.

Add squash, thyme and remaining broth. Simmer until squash is tender, another 30 to 45 minutes. Season to taste with salt, pepper and more thyme if desired. Serve topped with bacon crumbles.

The recipe claims it serves 12, which is probably the heart-healthy-size serving that clocks in at a mere 163 calories and 25 grams of carbs. Realistic winter survival servings are more like 8, tops.

Rating: Fine enough choice on a cold winter day when the snowflakes won’t stop swirling outside. The lentils pretty much give up, which makes a sort of flavorful paste to thicken the soup. The bacon helps with the flavor component, but it would be OK without if you’re looking for a vegetarian alternative. It’s a pretty mild soup, and might be the better for just a hint of some other flavor note. Maybe ginger next time, or red pepper flakes to perk it up.

At any rate, it's left me with one less squash that might go bad, only two partially opened packets of red lentils instead of three, and about 46 days of the worst part of winter to go.