Dukan Diet

I confess I don't like everything about the holidays (The sweets!  The overspending!)  But one thing I do love about this time of year is the way many of us are inspired to do things to help others.  Yes, I know some people donate for tax purposes.  But whatever motivates it, when people give to help those who are less fortunate, it's all good. 

Sadly, one in seven people in America face hunger, and many Americans rely on food banks to have enough food for their families.  And milk is one of the least donated items to food banks; in fact families who receive food from food banks get less than one gallon of milk per year.  

I'm grateful to my friend Heidi at FoodieCrush who told me recently about Santas Milk Drive, a milk donation program sponsored by The Great American Milk Drive to encourage donating milk during the holidays. If you visit the website and donate money for milk between now and December 31, every gallon of milk you finance will be matched by Feeding America.  (I just made a donation; you enter your state to be sure the milk you donate goes to food banks in your area.)  Please help by making a donation to Santa's Milk Drive if you can.

I know some of you are going to take one look at the title of this recipe and veto it because you think the Indian spices, the red lentils, or the spinach is just not going to appeal to you.   But that would be truly sad, because the entire time we were making this easy slow cooker soup, Jake and I just couldn't stop tasting it and remarking on how good it was!  Admittedly Jake is an Indian food lover, and I'm a fanatic for red lentils, but still we're pretty picky about what we consider to be "blog-worthy" and this delicious soup more than made the cut.  If you're not vegan you might like it with a dollop of fat-free Greek Yogurt, and I loved it with a generous squeeze of lime.